Fishermen cheer as stocks of North Sea cod increase by 5 per cent

Stocks of cod in the North Sea have increased by 5 per cent from last year according to scientists, prompting elation in the fishing industry but further warnings from conservationists.

Annual stock assessments released today by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) show that the number of spawning cod has risen slightly but the number of fish discarded at sea is still equal to the amount that reaches the shore.

Seafish, a body representing the seafood industry, points to a 40 per cent increase in the number of fish that have reach reproductive age, compared with the average between 2000 and 2008.

In every year except 2007, ICES has advocated a zero catch, but was ignored by the ministers, who each time pushed the total allowable catch up to 20,000 tonnes or above. Conservationists fear that similar inflation will occur this year.

Charles Clover, author of End of the Line, points out that ICES has never estimated the pre-industrial biomass of the cod, unlike colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic. “We therefore aren’t looking at the big picture, which is probably that the North Sea cod has declined by around 97 per cent since 1850, which is the case on the Scotia Bank and the Grand Banks. Would it not be better to aim for recovery to something like that abundance, rather than this continued bumping along the bottom?”

If continuing surveys indicate significant changes, ICES will issue new advice in November, before the European Commission’s quota allocation for 2010.

The Times
27 Junho 2009