Brussels, 19/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - The Advisory Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture (ACFA), composed of representatives from the fisheries sector, recently issued an opinion on amending the timetable for the presentation and improved quality of scientific advice. It suggests bringing forward the publication of scientific opinions to June to allow stakeholders “time enough to analyse the (…) advice and be able to give their point of view”. ACFA also stresses the need to devote more human and financial resources to analysis of the spawning biomass and fishing mortality for most of the stock areas. Given the large number of organisations that carry out stock assessments, such as the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES); the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF); the Regional Advisory Councils (RACs), and also ACFA, the latter considers it would be appropriate to create an agency responsible for ensuring coordination between all these bodies (discussions are underway on this with the European Commission). Finally, “in order to make sure that scientific advice is accepted by the parties involved, a clear strategic direction should be fixed to avoid duplication and lack of synergies in scientific information”, the representatives of stakeholders conclude.
For fish species that lend themselves to early scientific assessment (for example pelagic species), the scientific assessment process should take place earlier in the year, ACFA explains, saying it is not necessary for the Commission to systematically request a scientific opinion every year for every fish stock. It adds: “Not all are in danger and therefore merit medium-term strategies with greater involvement of the fishing professions in the management arrangements”. In addition to work conducted by scientists on the state of fisheries resources, professionals ought also to make their own assessments for the main target species, with Community funding. For those fish stocks which do not need to be managed on an annual basis (as stocks are good), the Council could, on the basis of the latest available opinion, set total allowable catches (TACs) and quotas for several years until the new required scientific assessment.
According to ICES, there is no problem for advice to be issued in June for species with a short lifespan (capelin, anchovy, sprat, etc), on deep water species and other species for which studies are carried out in spring. In fact, ICES is already providing advice in June for most of these species. ACFA admits that the change in timetable could pose a problem for species which have a lifespan of between two and five years as, more often than not, assessments include data from summer surveys. (lc)