MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Fisheries Ordinance will be implemented July 1

A MEETING of the Falklands Fisheries Committee has confirmed that the new Fisheries Ordinance will be implemented by July 1, 2006.

The Attorney General assured the meeting that although it might be difficult, it is possible to meet the deadline.

Also at the meeting, held on Friday, November 25, the meeting looked at Schedule Two of the new law which specifies the fisheries to be included in the new fisheries system. Director of Fisheries, John Barton explained, "In many respects these will reflect the fisheries which we currently have."

In the run up to enacting the Ordinance there had been a number of versions of Schedule Two. A last minute change resulted in some issues being addressed but also introduced some "less desirable" features from a previous version of Schedule Two.

The proposal to the fisheries committee was to amend Schedule Two to remove the points introduced from the previous obsolete version. This will be recommended to ExCo.

Mr Barton said the committee also took the view that the surimi fishery should be defined as a ?pelagic' restricted finfish fishery rather than being defined as a ?surimi' fishery.

Also discussed at the meeting were aggregation limit and dispensations. Mr Barton explained, "The issue there is to limit the proportion of any fishery which any one company can be involved with, either in terms of catch or quota holding." The paper was seeking to set general limits and then to consider the one current case where some dispensation on aggregation limits was being sought. The Fisheries Committee discussed the issues but there was not a consensus view.

Mr Barton commented, "I think there was reasonable agreement with the broad aggregation limits proposed, but no consensus on the dispensation issue." (PN)