MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands finfish quota: still no consensus.
Last week's meeting of the Falkland Island Government's Fisheries Committee heard that attempts to arrive at a consensus view on the allocation of quota in the finfish and restricted finfish fisheries had so far proved unsuccessful.
Director of Fisheries, John Barton, reported that there had been a number of divergent views expressed by industry representatives and a multiplicity of approaches suggested, as to how the track record of participating companies should be assessed.
The Fisheries Department had circulated a paper for response to fifteen local companies and had also received responses from other companies not circulated.
Mr. Barton told the meeting that there had been no unanimity of response on the qualifying period and a number of different approaches to assessing track record had been suggested. These included looking at effort as well as catch, relating use to the amount paid, using a longer qualifying period and including high seas catches.
Committee Chairperson, Councillor Dr Andrea Clausen, told MercoPress that the Director of Fisheries had been asked to make another attempt to narrow down the possible options and to see whether a consensus or majority view could be achieved.
Tom Blake of RBC Ltd, one of the companies circulated by the Fisheries Department, said that whatever period or periods might ultimately be chosen on which to base a company's track record, which would then directly affect their granted proportion of the available quota, there would be "some winners and some losers."
Mr. Blake said that he assumed that if a consensus was not reached it would be up to the government's Fisheries Department to take an impartial view, which might in the end be "the fairest way forward"
A similar view was expressed to MercoPress by Councillor Clausen, who said that given that the original timetable for the introduction of individual transferable quotas (ITQ) and provisional quotas (PQ), called for an agreement to be presented to the Falkland Islands Government's Executive Council at their September 29th meeting, the resolution of this matter was becoming increasingly urgent.
John Fowler (Mercopress) Stanley
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