Ireland bottom of table for fishing overcapacity

Ireland came last in a report on what EU countries are doing to match their fishing fleet to the amount of fish that can be safely taken out of the sea.

With many of the species that fishing communities depend on for a livelihood in danger of extinction, too many fishing boats is one of the chief obstacles to achieving a balance.

Europe’s fishing fleet can take two to three times the quantity of fish that is considered safe, contributing to the vicious circle of falling profits and over- fishing of endangered species.

But progress over the past few years has been glacially slow, with cuts of just 2% and 4% in the engine power and fleet tonnage a year, according to the European Commission.

And in many cases the small gains are reversed by the industry using new technology to catch the same quantity of fish.

A new fishing policy has been negotiated with member states over the past few months, and on Monday the issue of total allowable catches and fleet capacity will be fixed for 2013 by ministers, including Marine Minister Simon Coveney.

But facing him will be the commission’s annual report on what each of the EU’s 21 fishing countries did during 2010 to better match the amount of fish their fleets can take out of the sea to what is safely available.

Ireland’s performance for submitting reviews scored just 50%, the lowest of all countries involved, and earned a scathing review from the commission.

It found Ireland did not apply the guidelines on fleet reduction and did not prove an assessment of the balance between fleet capacity and fishing opportunities.

“Many of the targeted stocks are outside safe biological limits, which is evidenced by the decline in quotas and landings”, the report said.

The fleet, of which the most important are 23 pelagic trawlers (mackerel, herring and whiting) and the polyvalent segment, or multi-purpose vessels, that make up the bulk of the fleet, were subject to the reduction scheme. “But the administration has found it difficult to assess the effect of effort-reduction schemes on fleet capacity,” it said.

A statement from the Department of the Marine said some issues were not specifically addressed in the Irish report, “as it was considered actions were not necessary”. The report for 2011 follows the commission’s new guidelines “as fully as possible”.

Mike Walker of Ocean2021 said assessing and quantifying overcapacity in a country’s fleet is an essential starting point for proper fisheries management. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it,” he said.

Instead, Ireland and Spain simply described their fleets but did not draw any conclusions on the balance between what their boats were capable of fishing, and the fish available.

Mr Walker said an examination by the EU’s Court of Auditors found that EU funds were invested in cutting capacity without achieving its objective, and ignoring scientific advice. “Public aid must not be spent on maintaining overcapacity but rather on control and enforcement, data collection and research,” he said.