MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Decision on Falklands finfish quotas by Executive Council
Falkland Islands Governor, Mr Alan Huckle, reported Wednesday on the local radio station, FIRS, that Executive Council, the South Atlantic archipelago's senior governing body, had approved the methodology for determining applications for Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) and Provisional Quotas (PQs) in the various finfish fisheries.
Individual transferable quotas are an integral part of the Falkland Islands Government's new fishing policy, which dictates that in future licences to fish for various species will be issued for twenty-five years, instead of one as at present.
As reported earlier in MercoPress, how these quotas are to be allocated has been the subject of much discussion between the local fishing industry and the Falkland Islands Government Fisheries Department.
Failure to agree on methodology had threatened to further delay the introduction of the new policy, which had already been considerably delayed and therefore warnings had been issued, that if no clear consensus emerged between the several companies involved and the Fisheries department, Executive Council would take a final decision.
Describing the topic as "a fairly technical subject" Governor Huckle told listeners that the Executive Council paper would be publicly available to those interested in the argumentation. Briefly, however, he reported that Executive Council had agreed that decisions should be based on the actual catch performance of eligible companies, averaged over the three-year period 2000?2002, with any remaining balance of quota being distributed amongst successful applicants.
Mr. Huckle said that during the public consultations with fishing companies, some had wanted a calculation based on effort; others on the data recorded over five rather than three years; and others had wanted effort purchased but not used to be taken into account. Now most seemed to favour the methodology proposed and that was ExCo's decision. Consultations are still ongoing for the ray fishery.
John Fowler (MercoPress) Stanley
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