MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“The total elimination of fishery discards is very complicated”, says ICES

“Where the really big problem lies is in the mixed fisheries and in the mixed demersal ones” said ICES president Connowly

According to the president of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES/CIEM), Paul Connowly, the total elimination of fishery discards pursued by the Community authorities “is very complicated.”

“The first thing to be done this year is to implement it in pelagic fisheries because they are cleaner and it is easier to set the rule on them. Where the really big problem lies is in the mixed fisheries and in the mixed demersal ones,” Connowly said in an interview with the newspaper Faro de Vigo.

Speaking at the ICES annual scientific conference, the president of the organization ensured that introducing the objective of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) favored the improvement of the performance of certain stocks, such as that of the hake, but he warned that it is necessary to regulate all marine activities to keep the resources.

When asked by the Galician newspaper on the state of fisheries operated by the Spanish fleet, he commented it is getting better “and generally reaching the MSY objective”.

“Definitely, the sardine is undergoing a very difficult moment. While the nephrops is also in a rather complex situation, the hake is found to be in a better situation and has been recovering in recent years,” he said.

With respect to allegations of Spain that Portugal did not take as many measures as Spanish fishermen to protect the sardine, Connowly emphasized that “the key to recovery the resource” is the collaboration and understanding between the two countries.

“It's what he ICES does, through scientific cooperation so that no such differences exist. The key is in cooperation between the two parties that exploit the same stock,” he added.

As for the influence of climate change on marine resource status, Connowly said it is necessary to know how it affects the first phase of the fish life and further study ocean acidification issue.

For ICES President, overfishing and climate change affect the status of resources but this influence still cannot be quantified well and it is also difficult “to know what impact does one thing and what impact does another one.”

What Connowly did state is that hake and mackerel are moving increasingly farther towards northern waters due to climate change.

Finally, on being asked about the restructuring of the Commission for Environment, Fisheries and Maritime Affairs of the European Union (EU), he described it as a positive move because “the great challenge of the future is to jointly understand all the factors within the management of maritime and marine resources”.
“Change must be from a fisheries management to a management of the ocean use,” he stressed. (FIS).-