According to a report published on Monday 25 September by the NGO Oceana, only one in six forage fish populations in the North-East Atlantic is farmed sustainably and is in good health.
The organisation is urging EU Member States to improve the management of these small fish. For many marine species (marine mammals, seabirds, commercially important fish), forage fish (sandeel, sprat, herring, mackerel, Norway pout, horse mackerel) are their main source of food.
Of the 32 forage fish populations analysed in the Oceana report, only a fraction (16% or 5 populations) are harvested sustainably by EU fishing vessels. The others are overfished, have worrying levels of abundance, or their status is unknown due to a lack of data.
For Vera Coelho, Oceana’s deputy vice-president for Europe, “the deplorable state of these fish populations shows that we are not successfully exploiting forage fish”.
In particular, Oceana recommends setting catch limits for these species at levels well below the recommended maximum sustainable level. Scientific advice on forage fish must take full account of ecosystem considerations, such as the interdependence of species and environmental influences, including climate change, concludes Oceana.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/8q1 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)