An 'external' study, which will be presented on Wednesday 4 September to members of the European Parliament's Committee on Fisheries, recommends improving the systems for EU Member States to check the engine power of fishing vessels.
The engine power of fishing vessels is one of the criteria used to control fishing effort (days at sea) and the size of the EU fishing fleets, in order to ensure sustainable management of marine resources.
For effective management of fishing effort, registered power values must be reliable.
The authors of the study, commissioned by the European Commission, consider the engine power verification systems put in place by EU countries to be ineffective. Worse, some countries have no system at all.
The study notes that physical power verifications were conducted onboard 68 vessels in 14 Member States. “The measured engine power exceeded the certified engine power during 51% of the verifications, and for 16% of the inspected vessels there are secondary indications of non-compliance with engine power restrictions”, the study states.
The authors suggest improvements in both the certification and verification system, “to increase the accuracy of registered engine power”.
In case engines which are capable of producing substantially more power than the power output stated at the fishing license of the vessel in which they are installed are operated to their full potential, this undermines the effectiveness of fishing effort regimes, the same study points out.
The Commission has received many complaints concerning inconsistencies between engine power as recorded in national fleet registers and the actual engine power of vessels.
Sealing certain engine settings or deploying continuous power measurement could prevent such infringements, concludes the study, which can be consulted via the following link: http://bit.ly/2P92jUl (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)