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Plan for sustainable cod stocks
04/10/2007
The Scottish Government today set out its blueprint for the future of North Sea cod stocks.
Richard Lochhead, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, said:
"Scotland has a responsibility to achieve a sustainable cod fishery and that is a responsibility that our fishermen have demonstrated in recent years having bent over backwards to conserve stocks. This is also a responsibility that must be accepted by other nations that fish the same stock.
"Our blueprint for the future of cod management challenges head on the false premises in the European Commission's approach, which underestimates the measures already taken and the clear signs of improvement underway. It also proposes solutions.
"We have already started to think differently and imaginatively in our whole approach and to meet the undoubted challenges we face in conserving cod stocks. We must not for instance jeopardise our ability to catch healthy stocks as a result of a cod management plan.
"We have already taken the first steps through pilot programmes for real time closures and onboard observers, developed in close partnership with our fishermen and environmental groups.
"We have to move away from the command and control approaches in the past, and implement regionally based solutions, involving the industry and our fishing communities in framing their future.
"This analysis sets out how we can do this together and help set a new agenda for Europe in managing cod stocks so that they are sustainable. That is in everybody's interest.
"We will now seek to develop these ideas further with the UK Government, other European countries and with the Commission.
Key points of the blueprint are:
- The most effective technical measures will be developed regionally, to ensure tailored solutions building on past experience.
- The adoption of further measures need not be rushed through without full consultation and analysis, to avoid the risk of inappropriate solutions.
- With more cod in the North Sea an increase in the quota, alongside continuing effort controls, is necessary to reduce discarding.
- Fishing effort restrictions will continue to be necessary, but these should be more tailored to regional circumstances with responsibility increasingly delegated to Member States.
- Managing the immediate improvement of the stocks is an urgent task, but moving to optimal management can be phased-in over a longer period of time.
The document is currently available on request and will be available online shortly at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Fisheries
Link to the Scottish Government's voluntary scheme for real time closures as announced on August 30: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2007/08/30113942