newscat: Blog

Our relationship with nature is our link to life; and that link is under strain. The Covid-19 global pandemic demands emergency action from our political leaders to address the immediate health concerns and to cushion the economic impacts. Yet, such emergency action must be taken in the context of a wider plan for Europe’s future – guided by an ambitious European Green Deal and EU Biodiversity Strategy – in order to avoid exacerbating the pre-existing climate and nature crises. We need to remedy the broken relationships that endanger our planet and deepen inequalities within our society.

The ocean is the source of all life on this planet – including bacteria that is used in tests to detect COVID-19 – yet we are putting it under relentless pressure and undermining its capacity to support life on the planet. By easing that pressure and restoring ocean health, we can deliver enhanced resilience to the impacts of climate change, while safeguarding key natural elements that may equip us with countless more solutions to future and unexpected challenges.

The Covid-19 crisis has caused disruption in seafood supply chains, bringing temporary relief to some wild fish populations, but this should not be celebrated. Any environmental improvement has not come about due to a deliberate transition plan for fisheries workers, nor will any such respite prove lasting once the public health crisis passes. Improving the health of ocean ecosystems is clearly essential, and it needs to be done in a socially just manner.

The EU has numerous potential fisheries support policies that it could employ in response to Covid-19 that would also have long-term benefits for the sector, and for the ecosystems on which it depends. For example, it could enhance remote electronic monitoring, by putting cameras onboard instead of human observers, to ensure that essential data is collected and that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) does not undercut law-abiding fishers and the marine environment; and they could improve traceability to ensure that efforts to develop new, localised supply chains can support EU fishers and prevent IUU seafood from entering the supply chain, through digitisation.

Alternatively, some policies that have been publicly advocated for by elements of the EU fishing industry should be avoided as they fail to meet a series of principles. For example, the proposed rollover of 25% of this year’s fishing quotas to next year could worsen the existing climate and biodiversity crises, and the proposed VAT exemption does not address any specific Covid-19 related problems. However, governments should pursue existing flexibilities in the quota management system to allow fishers the opportunity to utilise their quota allocations, ensure that lost fishing income due to the Covid-19 public health crisis is compensated for through income support schemes, and condition any support for fixed business costs on improved environmental performance such as the adoption of fishing gear that has a lower impact on ocean ecosystems

Fundamentally the Covid-19 economic crisis is about incomes, costs, and livelihoods. Improvements to incomes will be larger and longer-lasting if fish populations are allowed to replenish: if there are more fish in the sea then the subsequent fishing quotas would be larger. Fishing costs also decrease as more abundant fish populations would be harvested with less effort, while better prices can be secured by ending the ‘boom and bust’ of quota-setting cycles and fish grow to larger sizes.

A path to “build back better” should invest in the marine environment, secure a more resilient labour model for marine fisheries, and shift financial support away from damaging subsidies, towards a system where the industry pays for the costs of management, for access to a limited public resource, and for environmental damages.

Critically, while Covid-19 response measures may offer support for one year, a sustainable marine environment will support livelihoods for years to come. The new EU Biodiversity Strategy acknowledges this, and emphasises the need for a just transition to low-impact fishing to restore ocean health. The big challenge now is to make this real; the EU needs to stop making decisions about short-term profits that further damage our life support system and undermine the future of coastal communities.

With the climate and biodiversity crises as the setting, all EU policy proposals need to answer the fundamental question: how does this policy allow us to “build back better”? 

To help answer this question, 12 international NGOs have published the briefing Setting the Right Safety Net: A Framework for Fisheries Support Policies in Response to Covid-19, as a framework for governments to assess whether fisheries support policies in response to Covid-19 will aid the path towards a healthier fishing sector, public, and marine environment.

Rebecca Hubbard is the Program Director of Our Fish, an EU-wid campaign to end overfishing and restore a healthy ocean ecosystem.

First published on May 22, 2020, on Euronews: The EU COVID-19 response must foster sustainability to support fishing incomes and ecosystems

#EndOverFishing

We love fish.

Sure, they aren’t cute like cats or dogs, but out of sight, fish are helping to save the world. The ocean is our biggest protector against climate change, having absorbed over 90% of human made heat in the last 50 years, and fish play a critical role in keeping ocean ecosystems healthy.

We think these unsung heroes deserve a little love. If you agree, why not make some fish origami using the instructions below? All you need to get started is a square piece of paper.

 

We are living in extraordinary and difficult times. EU leaders are taking tough decisions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, decisions informed and driven by scientific and expert advice and projections. The crisis we face because of climate change and biodiversity loss is no less existential, and the response should be no less scientific, which is why the EU Commission is in the process of developing strategies which could be pioneering in how we respond to these crises.

The Farm to Fork strategy, expected to be released by the end of the month, should lay-out how we put in place systems to deliver healthy food which does not harm the environment. Also in the pipeline is a new biodiversity strategy, which should complement and work in tandem with the Farm to Fork Strategy to deliver on the EU’s Green Deal.

The need to transform how we use and produce food has been clear for decades, yet political decisions have been made which have ignored this reality. We have been farming and fishing – and consuming – as though everything will be fine. This clearly needs to stop. We must decide upon what is necessary in order to achieve a truly sustainable food system.

Our oceans and fisheries are key to driving a truly ambitious and timely agenda for food production and consumption in Europe, and the science is clear. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere states that having a healthy ocean is part of any mitigation and adaptation to the climate emergency, while last year’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report highlights fishing as the biggest pressure on our ocean ecosystem.

We must enact fundamental changes in fisheries management by moving from an obsession with maximising resource [fish] extraction to prioritising ecosystem health – an ecosystem that will continue to provide fish in the future. Accomplishing this means acknowledging and minimising the true carbon footprint of fishing, such as from bottom trawling and aquaculture which can be greater than land-based animal proteins. The EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy must set ambitious new targets to reduce seafood consumption, as well as prioritise the immediate implementation of existing targets and proven strategies to make seafood production ecologically sustainable.

In the coming weeks and months, we will learn to adapt our lives. The Farm to Fork and biodiversity strategies are an opportunity to ensure a similar adaptation. Business as usual is not an option. Our relationship with food must be based on a healthy environment.

The EU has committed to lead on the Sustainable Development Goals but achieving these aims will not be possible if we continue with the same attitude that has got us to where we are. A new, fairer and more sustainable approach to food systems is needed; the Farm to Fork Strategy is a major opportunity for us to contribute to Europe’s climate change agenda, protect the environment and preserve biodiversity. It has the potential to ensure fishers’ position in the value chain and to encourage ecologically sustainable food consumption that delivers affordable, safe healthy food for all. Now is the time for the EU Commission and the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG Mare) to deliver this.

• Rebecca Hubbard is the Our Fish Programme Director. Read the Our Fish submission to the Farm to Fork Strategy.

First published by Euronews: The EU must seize this chance to deliver a fairer and more sustainable food system

On 19 December, as he entered the European Council building for environmental talks, EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius tweeted, “We are ready to discuss our plans for transformative change to protect and restore our Nature.”

Yet, a day earlier, Commissioner Sinkevičius announced during an early morning press briefing that he had agreed with the Council of Fisheries Ministers that they would continue destroying nature – that is, the EU member states would continue overfishing in the northeast Atlantic in 2020. He even posted a celebratory tweet, claiming: “That is why tonight we put the long-term interest of the European fisheries first!“

While we appreciate that all-night EU AGRIFISH negotiations may necessitate tough political decisions, agreeing to continue overfishing is in the long-term interest of no-one – least of all the fishing industry – and should be lamented, not celebrated.

By agreeing to another year of destructive overfishing, the EU is embarking on a retrograde change, not a transformative one. Fish are more than a menu item, more than a commodity to be extracted. They are a critical part of the most important ecosystem on Earth – the ocean. Overfishing remains the largest threat to ocean biodiversity, and is not consistent with the European Commission’s strategy for responding to the crisis facing the planet and our life support system.

Before the AGRIFISH negotiations had kicked off, Commissioner Sinkevičius, along with a representative of Executive Vice-President Timmerman, had accepted half a million signatures and thousands of personal messages from EU citizens, calling for the EU to end overfishing and deliver climate action. Despite this, the Commission and EU fisheries ministers chose to miss this opportunity to rebuild ocean health and combat climate change.

The EU Commission cannot hope to deliver real world change with an EU Green Deal if it simply facilitates or rewards the same behaviour that created the problem in the first place, such as overfishing. We must put an end to this cognitive dissonance: we cannot claim to be saving nature or to be taking impactful climate action while celebrating continued ocean destruction.

Commissioner Sinkevičius and Executive Vice-President Timmermans, you know what needs to be done; just like our scientists, firefighters, health professionals and students know. If you truly wish to deliver transformative change for nature and life on the planet, you must prioritise the preservation of our life support system.

We must stand together to put a decisive and immediate end to overfishing.

• Rebecca Hubbard is the Programme Director at Our Fish.

First published on Euronews Views, 28 January 2020.

First published on Euronews, 2 December 2019: Depleted fish stocks can’t wait. The EU and Norway need to commit to ending overfishing now

This week, in a quiet street in the Norwegian harbour town of Bergen, officials from EU member states and Norway will hole up in the Fiskeridirektoratet, or Fisheries Directorate, to decide the size of the fish pie to get divided out between them from so-called “shared stocks.” This “consultation,” as it is known, happens away from public scrutiny. Yet, fishing industry lobbyists are allowed in where they get to cosy up to delegates, while civil society representatives are – quite literally – left out in the cold. These annual gatherings are even more secretive than the EU AGRIFISH council meetings, which were recently investigated by the EU Ombudsman and found to be lacking in transparency.

EU-Norway consultations consistently result in agreements to continue overfishing. This is in no small part due to a bewilderingly flawed approach: by assuming the scientific advice for maximum sustainable catches as a starting point and then negotiating upwards. The EU committed to phase out overfishing under the reformed Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) by 2015 or, at the absolute latest, by 2020. Yet while the act of catching too many fish occurs at sea, it is inside meetings like this where overfishing is shamelessly agreed upon and approved.

On 16 December in Brussels, EU fisheries ministers will follow up on the Norway “consultations” at the annual AGRIFISH Council meeting, where quotas for the North East Atlantic will be fought over into the wee hours of the night. According to all the signs, this year they will again agree to overfish several key stocks.

The signals? Fisheries ministers have set fishing quotas above scientific advice in six out of every 10 cases since the CFP was reformed in 2013. The AGRIFISH Council very rarely sets fishing quotas at more sustainable levels than the EU Commission proposes. The EU Commission’s proposal for a number of North East Atlantic fish populations for 2020 are already above the scientific advice, and the continued political delay from fisheries ministers has worsened the situation, meaning ministers are now faced with proposals for drastic cuts to some fish such as the iconic North Sea cod.

Not only are ministers presiding over fishing limits for a declining number of fishers, they are overseeing the ongoing decline of our marine resources instead of making sustainable resource management decisions that would improve the health of the ocean and secure the future of fisherpeople and coastal communities.

The recent ground-breaking IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimated humanity is threatening a million species with extinction. It also concluded that the biggest threats to nature are from changes to land/sea use and over-exploitation. Overfishing remains the biggest impact on our ocean.

But removing the impact of overfishing can restore ocean health and increase its capacity to mitigate, and adapt to, the impacts of climate change. It is therefore a key form of climate action. This has started to permeate into policy. On 19 November, the EU Council, in response to the recent IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere, appealed to the EU Commission for policy options in the new Green Deal, while stating the need for urgent action to address the increasing threat of climate breakdown to the ocean and marine life.

So, missing the deadline of 2020 puts the EU in difficult territory. It places EU fisheries ministers in direct contravention of the laws that they, or their predecessors, created and signed up to, and in potential conflict with the climate action taken by other ministries within their own governments.

Norway, too, has invested a great deal in projecting itself as a climate and anti-overfishing champion, when in actual fact, it too, is hypocritical on both issues. On climate, Norway has made big commitments to become a ‘low-carbon society’ but in reality, emissions are decreasing much slower. On overfishing, Norway signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals to end overfishing by 2020, but on the water, they received a quota in 2019 large enough to plunder a massive 164,000 tonnes of fish above scientifically advised sustainable levels (equivalent to 21% of its shared stock quota with the EU).

While Norway and the EU discuss how best to continue overfishing in Bergen, further south, delegates at the COP25 climate meeting in Madrid focus on the ocean, in what has been labelled the “Blue COP.” With states under pressure to step up their commitments to action on climate, discussions will be focusing on why there is not more action on oceans when we know what needs to be done. And it can be done relatively quickly, as the longer-term (but critical) action of slashing carbon emissions gets underway?

Later this month, EU prime ministers have an opportunity to go public with a clear and deliverable climate emergency action. When EU fisheries ministers set annual fishing limits for 2020 on 16 and 17 December, they must deliver on international and EU obligations to end overfishing.

• Rebecca Hubbard is the Programme Director at Our Fish.

Published by Open Access Government, October 17th, 2019:

Rebecca Hubbard, Programme Director of the Our Fish campaign, reveals precisely how EU decisions affect fish, the ocean and life on earth

Europe’s seas are home to some of the world’s most productive fisheries, and the European Union (EU) is the world’s largest trader of seafood products. (1) What we do with fish matters; as well as providing food and jobs for the fishing industry – fish keep our marine ecosystems functioning. Fish and marine life are the engines of our global ocean, the ocean that supplies us with every second breath drives our climate and has absorbed 90% of the excess heat produced from accelerated climate change. You could say the ocean is the heart and lungs of the planet. So with fish populations coming under severe pressure from both climate change and overfishing, the question arises – by ending one problem, can the other be alleviated? And can we do it fast enough to make a difference?

The EU has long acknowledged its overfishing problem and member governments have committed to putting an end to it. Yet fish populations continue to be fished far beyond what scientists advise – and at the last count, some 1.7 million tonnes of ‘unwanted’ fish were being discarded at sea dead or dying every year – wasted.

This is clearly absurd. Back in 2013, hundreds of thousands of people around Europe thought so too and demanded an end to overfishing and discarding. Following pressure from civil society, industry and politicians, EU governments agreed to reform the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to end overfishing by 2015, or by 2020 at the latest.

A great deal of backslapping followed as ministers congratulated themselves on a job well done. But with commitment, action is required; 2015 is long past – and with 2020 fast approaching, EU Member States continue overfishing, treating our seas as a resource to be mined, rather than an ecosystem that supports life on our planet and a collectively-owned public good for the benefit of all citizens, now and in the future.

As a result, many EU fish populations are being fished beyond what scientists advise is sustainable. In April 2019, a report of the EU’s own scientific experts(2) found that 41% of assessed populations in the Northeast Atlantic were still subject to overfishing in 2017 and 37% of stocks were still outside safe biological limits. In the Mediterranean, around 90% of fish populations are overfished.

At last December’s AGRIFISH Council in Brussels, an annual gathering where EU fishing quotas are horse-traded during closed-door, all-night sessions, fisheries ministers agreed to quotas a whopping 300,000 tonnes above scientific advice for the North-East Atlantic in 2019 – increasing overfishing by 10% on the previous year.

Good, publicly-funded scientific advice is placed on ministers’ desks, but when it comes to the crunch, long-term social, financial and ecological thinking is cast aside in favour of short term profit or political deals. The situation often worsens the following year, when scientists advise even bigger cuts to quotas – because previous decisions have worsened the health of the fish populations – creating a negative feedback loop that spirals downwards.

To make matters worse, discarding of unwanted fish at sea has not stopped; the massive waste of fish through bycatch continues and improvements in fishing selectivity and catch documentation anticipated by the reformed CFP has not eventuated. Many believe this is largely because there is virtually no policing of fishing vessels at sea and without monitoring and enforcement, the rules are simply being ignored. With stories of widespread illegal and unreported catches emerging, Our Fish has launched Fishyleaks.eu, to provide a secure and anonymous website for reporting infringements.

Does it have to be this way? Of course not. Will it take a long time to change? No. During two EU Council meetings of two days each and one week of negotiations with Norway, the EU sets its annual fishing limits. Member States can end overfishing by 2020 (as law demands), by simply following scientific advice. And they can enforce the ban on discards by introducing Remote Electronic Monitoring on fishing vessels (CCTV in working areas) to verify that what they are catching and reporting, reflects the fish that are being brought ashore.

Is overfishing the only threat to the ocean? Certainly not. But besides the rapidly worsening impacts of climate change, it is still considered the greatest. Can removing one help the other? A new paper from scientists at the University of British Columbia, released on 2nd September and commissioned by Our Fish, finds that one of the clearest pathways to building ocean resilience in the face of climate change is to end overfishing.

The paper finds that overfishing severely weakens the health of the ocean. So when climate change hits, the ability of the ocean (and its wildlife and fish populations) to withstand that extra impact, is severely undermined. But scientists have found that by removing the pressure of overfishing, fish species have a drastically increased chance of survival. Combined with the fact that fish help sink carbon in the ocean and reducing extra boats will achieve a more profitable and sustainable carrying capacity, it means ending overfishing will also capture more carbon and reduce emissions.(3)

It’s time to sink or swim. The EU and a number of Member States have begun to acknowledge the state of the climate crisis. They are debating a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 and talking about new Green Deals which will prioritise action that pulls back the runaway climate change train and saves nature for our children.

But if the EU is going to do this, it needs to put the ocean at the heart of any climate action plan – because the ocean is the heart and lungs of the planet. And we are going to need many tools and strategies, including those that can be practically delivered immediately. Not only does ending overfishing rebuild marine life and deliver on EU fisheries law, but it is also instrumental in bolstering ocean resilience in the face of dangerous climate change. Ending overfishing is emergency climate action and it’s time the EU slams on the brakes.

References

1 EUMOFA, 2016. The EU fish Market 2016 edition. European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture Products. www.eumofa.eu

2 Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF), 2019. Monitoring the performance of the Common Fisheries Policy.

3 U. Rashid Sumaila and Travis C. Tai, 2019. Working Paper #2019-05, Ending overfishing can mitigate impacts of climate change. Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries & School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, the University of British Columbia.

“Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child’s Meccano set… to write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox”, wrote George Orwell, 72 years ago.

Not much has changed, it seems. In Turning the Tide, published on The Parliament’s website on April 23, João Aguiar Machado, the EU Commission Director-General of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries signed what appeared to be a hastily assembled list of things to be greenwashed, cobbled into a self-congratulatory work of fiction.

We do not live in orthodox times – we must employ fearlessness and honesty, not wishful thinking and greenwashing, if we we are to confront and overcome the issues facing our oceans and climate – such as continual EU overfishing.

Mr Machado writes that the “EU is quickly becoming a world leader in protecting” the oceans. Our Fish would counter that the EU must first show leadership by delivering protection in EU waters before crusading abroad. Reforming the common fisheries policy in 2013, in a bid to save both plummeting fish populations and ailing fishing industries, was an important first step. But six years later, EU countries are still failing to implement those laws – and they are trying to retell the story in a way that makes them look good.

Mr Machado wrote: “In 2009, the EU fishing fleet was barely profitable. This year, almost 99 percent of the stocks in the North East Atlantic and Baltic Sea, managed by the EU alone, will be fished sustainably.”

Indeed, the EU Common Fisheries Policy commits to sustainable fishing of all fish stocks by 2015, or by 2020 at the latest (in line with Maximum Sustainable Yield). But here’s how far from the real story that Mr Machado is drifting with his bullet points of progress:

• In 2019, almost 99 percent of the catches managed exclusively by the EU – by volume, not stocks, will have their fishing limits set in line with scientific advice for sustainable levels.
  • Some fisheries are caught in much higher volumes than others – but these “smaller” fish stocks also have important ecosystem functions. Perhaps more importantly – some of those stocks are now “small” because they have been, and continue to be, severely overfished.
  • In fact, 41 percent of EU TACs (Total Allowable Catches) for 2019 exceed scientific advice for sustainable limits – just a few months from the deadline to have 100% of TACs meeting the CFP’s requirement to end overfishing. So that’s just 59 percent of stocks (not 99) with sustainable fishing limits.
  • Mr Machado opts to mention only EU-exclusively managed stocks, despite the fact that the EU “negotiates” many shared fishing limits with Norway every year, and both have made international commitments to end overfishing.
  • In fact, 53 percent of the TACs for stocks shared with Norway exceed scientific advice for sustainable limits in 2019.
  • There are many fish stocks that are being fished by the EU for which there is not enough data to give reliable scientific advice on sustainable levels – so scientists must give precautionary advice. However, these figures are not included in the Commission’s assessment of progress toward sustainable fisheries.
    • In fact, of 45 ‘data-poor’ fish stocks, 49 percent of TACs exceed the scientific advice in 2019.

The initial impression is that by focusing on this “99 percent” message, Mr Machado’s article appears to present the EU as mostly “getting it right” with sustainable fisheries management. However, on closer examination, it seems that he, the EU Commission and Member States are trying to rewrite the story on overfishing. They are attempting to shift the baseline to create an acceptable level of overfishing – even when this exacerbates the climate and biodiversity crises that our children are rampaging against.

“One of our main achievements in fisheries management is the so-called landing obligation” writes Commissioner Machado. “Every year, worldwide, 30 million tons of fish are thrown back into the sea – most don’t survive. The landing obligation puts a stop to this wasteful practice.”

The landing obligation aimed to end the ridiculous waste of around 1.7 million tonnes of fish by EU fishing fleets each year. But Mr Machado is well aware that the landing obligation has not stopped it, because it is neither being complied with – which is why the Commission introduced a proposal for remote electronic monitoring into the review of the Control Regulation in 2018 – nor is it being implemented in full.

“From January 2019, EU vessels must bring all catches ashore, without exemption”, says the article.

This is not correct; the discard plans approved by the European Commission include several exemptions in all sea basins – in some cases, despite warnings from scientists that there was insufficient evidence to justify it. DG Mare even has an exemptions webpage where anyone can read about it – including the Director General.

“In the face of climate change, our oceans offer us remarkable means to mitigate this planetary challenge”.

If Mr Machado and the EU Commission truly believe this, what are they waiting for? A recent IPCC report proposed that we have just 12 years to counter the worst effects of the climate crisis. How many of these years will the EU Commission devote to signing off puff-pieces that attempt to assure us that all is well – and that the crisis is being dealt with?

The IPBES report released this month states that we are threatening 1,000,000 species with extinction – along with the very life-support system we all depend on. One of the key drivers, even more than climate change, is exploitation of organisms (eg. fishing). We are careening towards the cliff edge. Only immediate transformative change will save us, which means facing up to the truth and standing up to those with vested interests who benefit – at least in the shorter term – from ignoring reality.

If the EU is serious about being a global leader, the new team of Commissioners will need to stop trying to rewrite the truth, and instead focus on changing the future to the one we need. Our children are outraged, our scientists are calling for a revolution. It’s time to deliver on your commitments to us, and to our oceans.

Ending overfishing is one of the quickest, most straightforward ways the EU can help stop the haemorrhage of marine biodiversity, restore ocean health and build resilience against the worst effects of climate change. Mr Machado and his colleagues know exactly what needs to be done.

Rebecca Hubbard is the Programme Director of Our Fish, which works to end EU Overfishing.

An abridged version of this article was published in Parliament Magazine, May 20, 2019

On December 17, 2018 Our Fish and our partners WeMoveEU, Seas At Risk and Deutsche Umwelthilfe, greeted fisheries ministers (the AGRIFISH Council) in Brussels with a petition of over 350,000 people, calling on them to deliver on their commitment to end overfishing by 2020. Even the God of the Ocean Poseidon, and his Minister for Fish – with trumpeters and the whole shebang were there to emphasise just how important it is that EU decision makers act on these commitments, and start delivering their benefits now.

The European Commission has replied, seeking to assure us – and you – that they are making progress towards ending overfishing. They say that an increase from 56 to 59 fishing limits, or TACs (total allowable catches or annual fishing limits) in line with scientific advice is good progress. We disagree.

An analysis by the New Economics Foundation, shows that for 120 TAC decisions made (or confirmed) at the December meeting, 55 TACs exceeded the advice, amounting to 312,000 tonnes of excess TAC – yes – 312,000,000 kilograms of fish. That’s a lot of overfishing.

While the Commission is certainly not the only one to blame for this failure – many fisheries ministers negotiated hard – it is shocking that the Commission justifies this outcome as good “progress”. Perhaps even more concerning is that the Commission is talkinging about the percentage of the total catch that is in line with scientific advice, rather than the number of individual stocks still being overfished. This distorts the perception of progress to end overfishing of EU fish stocks as there are many smaller stocks which are vulnerable and valuable and in need of recovery.

We will be continuing our work for healthier oceans and an end to EU overfishing in 2019 – and we hope you can join us – fish and the ocean are, after all, your precious public resources! Sign the petition to end overfishing and receive updates on the campaign here.

Rebecca Hubbard, Our Fish Programme Director