Pelagic AC. Executive Committee meeting 5 October :00 12:00 hrs Parkhotel Molenstraat 53, 2513 BJ Den Haag

Transcription

1 Pelagic AC meeting 5 October :00 12:00 hrs Parkhotel Molenstraat 53, 2513 BJ Den Haag The Netherlands Louis Braillelaan EK Zoetermeer The Netherlands Phone: +31 (0) info@pelagic-ac.org Website: Participants 1 Jesper Raakjær, chair University of Aalborg 2 Amalia de Diego y Vega European Commission 3 Ashley Wilson The Pew Charitable Trusts 4 Carl Jesper Hermansen Danish Fishermen PO 5 Carmen Abad Federación Provincial de Cofradías de Pescadores de Lugo 6 Claus Reedtz Sparrevohn Danish Pelagic Producers Organisation 7 Delphine Roncin From Nord 8 Eric Roeleveld Jaczon 9 Esben Sverdrup-Jensen Danish Pelagic Producers Organisation 10 Gerard van Balsfoort Pelagic Freezer-trawler Association 11 Goncalo Carvalho Sciaena 12 Ian Gatt Scottish Pelagic Fishermen s Association 13 Jerome Jourdain UAPF 14 Jessica Demblon EBCD 15 John Ward Irish Fish PO 16 José Beltran OPLUGO 17 Justyna Zajchowska The Pew Charitable Trusts 18 Ludmilla van der Meer Pelagic AC 19 Mads Larsson AIPCE 20 Matthew Cox National Federation of Fishermen s Organisation 21 Miren Garmendia OPEGUI 22 Patrick Murphy Irish South & West PO 23 Reine J. Johansson Swedish Pelagic Federation 24 Romain Soisson Compagnie des Pêches St-Malo 25 Sean O Donoghue Killybegs Fishermen s Organisation 26 Steven Mackinson Scottish Fishermen s Federation 27 Verena Ohms Pelagic AC 28 Wietze Kampen European Transport Worker s Federation Page 1 of 8

2 1. Opening of the meeting by the chairman, Jesper Raakjær The chairman opened the meeting at 10:00 hrs. 2. Adoption of the agenda The agenda was adopted without amendments. 3. Follow-up on action items The first action item was for members to inform the secretariat about their interest to join the Working Groups and/or the (ExCom) prior to today s meeting. The second action item was to organize a focus group meeting on the choke mitigation tool and to present the results at yesterday s meeting. The final action item was to circulate the draft recommendation for North Sea and WBSS herring prior to the next meeting. All action items have been completed. 4. Report from the NWW AC meeting on the future functioning of the ACs The chairman explained that the NWW AC had invited the other ACs to attend a meeting on the functioning of the ACs. One of the reasons for organizing that meeting has been a recent discussion of the ACs by the PECH Committee without actually inviting the ACs. Another reason was to start discussions on what will happen to the ACs after BREXIT. Especially the NWW, the NS and the Pelagic AC will be affected by BREXIT. Besides himself, Sean O Donoghue and Verena Ohms attended the meeting which was basically a brainstorming exercise. People talked about various existing and potentially new models that could guide how the ACs should be structured in the future. Across the board people were pleased with recent developments in the ACs where a lot of work is efficiently being done in focus groups. However, there was also anxiety on how to continue. The main conclusion of the meeting was to look at different models for how the ACs could look like in the future and list their pros and cons. The NWWAC was also looking for another AC to arrange a follow-up meeting and the chairman had offered that the Pelagic AC would follow up on the initiative given that this is a very important process for the Pelagic AC. This is also in line with the ExCom s previous conclusion that people should start addressing the issue. Other ACs will have to be involved in the process too, but the group will have to be small enough to be effective, yet large enough to be legitimate. The chairman therefore suggested that a small core team should take on the responsibility to draft a discussion document which can be dealt with at future ExCom meetings. Since this was the first opportunity since the NWW AC meeting to discuss this issue with the ExCom he invited comments from members. Reine Johansson agreed that the issue should be discussed in depth. He said that there will be some sort of advisory body in the next CFP, but it was unknown what this will look like. Gerard van Balsfoort said that BREXIT will mostly affect the NWW AC, the NS AC and the Pelagic AC. Discussing the future of these ACs would be easy, if people knew what BREXIT will look like, but at this stage nobody does. It could be a real change of UK policy and it could still take a couple of years before the real BREXIT will happen. Therefore, he wanted to be cautious not to make too many assumptions and model something that in the end will be very different from reality. He said that timing is important as well as the way the discussion will be organized. If the most concerned ACs formulate a report together, then there is a risk of starting a process that is hard to control. He was not against the idea Page 2 of 8

3 and wanted to pursue it, but at the same time he said that people should expect a long discussion and he asked everyone to be open for continuous adjustments. He also agreed that the discussion paper should be delivered by a small group of people, however, he emphasized the necessity of having an open discussion without drawing any conclusions yet. He said that discussions on the next CFP reform will probably start in 2019 with a white paper which will coincide with more information on how BREXIT will look like. The real issue for the three ACs mentioned is really BREXIT, and not so much the functioning of the ACs. The chairman pointed out that he wanted to avoid having someone start the discussion on the future of the ACs without the ACs being involved. He agreed that it was crucial to have an open discussion, but also said that too large a group will hinder progress and efficiency. He wanted to take the lead on this given the importance for the Pelagic AC. Sean O Donoghue added that the NWW AC had also invited the Commission and Member States, but all of the representatives canceled their participation in the week before the meeting. Furthermore, most AC representatives were from the NWW AC and only few were from other ACs. Overall this led to a very unstructured process. Afterwards the Pelagic AC agreed to arrange the next meeting. However, the intention is that all interested ACs will be involved in organizing meetings in a rotational fashion. The two issues to be looked at are BREXIT and the next CFP reform. He hoped that sometime next year people will have come up with a number of different models that can be discussed, first within the Pelagic AC and then with all ACs. He said that people were far away from having any proposals, but there was a danger of missing the train and he felt very strongly that the discussions must start soon. It was also important to find a balance regarding representation. Reine Johansson believed that for the next CFP reform industry and NGOs will provide input separately. He was not against having the discussion, but he thought that it will be much more complicated than anticipated by the ACs. He also would like to discuss the topics with the UK industry and hear from them how they envisage the future. Goncalo Carvalho is involved in two ACs and in his experience the current model is not a problem, but it could use some tweaking. He would like to be involved in the process and said that the NGOs are already working on these issues as is the industry. He thought that both parties should work together as soon as possible. Even without BREXIT the issue of third countries is very important for ACs like the Pelagic AC and the LDAC. BREXIT is speeding up the process. He was not sure about the timeline for the next CFP reform and asked the Commission for more information. Amalia de Diego y Vega said that there was no concrete planning yet, but she promised to keep the ACs informed regarding the timeline. The Commission is also very concerned about BREXIT, but cannot provide any information yet. The chairman understood the concerns raised by Reine Johansson, but at the same time emphasized the importance of being internally aware of the process and making preparations. He agreed that BREXIT will have implications for the next CFP. For now, he wanted to give people the opportunity to think about the ideas raised today and to continue the discussion in the next ExCom meeting. Reine Johansson said that it is hard to predict the future. He was certain that there will be regionalization and that there will be some form of advisory committee. However, the format will not be the same, because it will be impossible to have the same structure in the future. People will have to discuss whether the current system is a good system and whether people are happy with it. He was aware that some industry organizations and some NGOs are not happy with it. He did not want to keep the Pelagic AC from pursuing the idea described, but he warned people that the complications of the situation go beyond BREXIT. Page 3 of 8

4 The chairman agreed, but also decided that this was not a reason to refrain from having these discussions and concluded that the issue will again be dealt with at the next meeting. 5. Advice from Working Group I (decision) The chairman invited Esben Sverdrup-Jensen to present the recommendations from Working Group I. Esben Sverdrup-Jensen presented draft recommendations for all Working Group I stocks which reflected the discussions of the Working Group. For blue whiting this meant following the ICES MSY advice, but also to continue the work of the focus group and to explore alternative mechanisms for exploiting a stock that is characterized by changing recruitment regimes, as is the case for blue whiting. Regarding Atlanto-Scandian herring it was agreed to follow the long-term management plan and to await the re-evaluation of reference points which might trigger further recommendations. For North Sea horse mackerel, the meeting agreed to advice a TAC that corresponds to the ICES catch advice, i.e. excluding discards and to urge the Commission and Member States to develop solutions to eliminate pelagic discards in the demersal fisheries as well as analyze existing discard data. Sean O Donoghue supported the recommendation, but also pointed out that he was very concerned about the demersal discards. There are technical measures available that could mitigate the issue and these are described in the choke mitigation tool. He wanted to eliminate discards as much as possible and reduce the discard rate to less than 5%. Jerome Jourdain said that the first step will be to get a better idea of the true discard rate and to understand why there are such large discrepancies between ICES and STECF data. He offered looking into how much discards are declared by France, but said that this information will be needed from all Member States. It might even turn out that the true discard rate is higher than 13%. Esben Sverdrup-Jensen agreed with Jerome Jourdain and explained that the second part of the draft recommendation was aiming to make that clear. Sean O Donoghue said that the discard data have been intensively looked at by the NWW AC when developing the choke mitigation tool. The NWW AC has already identified North Sea horse mackerel as a problem area and he suggested referring to the choke mitigation tool. Esben Sverdrup-Jensen wanted to keep the text as it was since the Pelagic AC has not yet dealt with the choke mitigation tool in much detail. This was approved by the ExCom. The recommendations for North Sea and Western Baltic spring spawning herring repeated last year s advice and were also approved by the ExCom. The last recommendation put forward by Esben Sverdrup-Jensen referred to the footnote recommendation from 2016 to solve small bycatch issues in pelagic fisheries. The response to that recommendation had been that Member States will work on the issue, but unfortunately no progress has been made since then. He therefore suggested to re-send the recommendation which was available on the website. Goncalo Carvalho said that he would need some time to re-check last year s recommendation again and asked whether it would be possible to agree on this after the meeting. The chairman suggested to follow written procedure in this regard, especially since there was no urgency given that the issue would be dealt with at the Council meeting in December. Page 4 of 8

5 6. Advice from Working Group II (decision) The chairman invited Sean O Donoghue to present the recommendation from Working Group II. Sean O Donoghue said that there are a number of stocks which had required offline discussion, but he believed that the different parties reached some very good compromises. He reminded the meeting that the Pelagic AC is renowned for putting forward consensus positions rather than majority positions. The first recommendation related to mackerel and the meeting agreed to advise following the longterm management strategy to be revised on October, provided it meets the precautionary approach and article 2.2 of the CFP. If that is not the case, MSY should be followed. In addition, some technical issues had to be addressed as well, i.e. the different signals provided by the egg survey and the IESSNS survey, as well as the problems with the RFID tagging. Gerard van Balsfoort agreed with the reference to article 2.2 of the CFP, but as a matter of principle he also pointed out that there are other important objectives in the CFP, e.g. article 2.1 which relates to socio-economics. In his view a management strategy should contribute to achieving all aspects of the CFP, not only article 2.2. Sean O Donoghue considered this a fair comment, but explained that in this specific case article 2.2 was relevant from a scientific point of view. Goncalo Carvalho was happy to follow all the relevant articles in the CFP as long as that includes article 2.2. The meeting approved the recommendation from the Working Group. For Western horse mackerel the ExCom agreed to follow the ICES MSY approach in 2018 and to continue the work on developing a new long-term management strategy as well as the genetics project. Regarding southern horse mackerel the Working Group recommended following MSY in 2018 and to ask the Commission to submit the recently developed management strategy to ICES for evaluation. Sean O Donoghue said that there were two small changes in the management strategy compared to the version on the website. The change is that reference is being made to article 2.2 of the CFP under the section Objectives and again under point 5.3 of the section TAC setting procedures. Sean O Donoghue further explained that the situation with this stock is quite unusual, because it is being fished far below MSY. So, instead of trying to reduce fishing mortality, this strategy tries to gradually increase it. Goncalo Carvalho added that the perception of the stock is not changing, but that the fishery is changing rapidly. Therefore, the strategy safeguards that MSY will not be overshot by gradually increasing fishing mortality. The strategy incorporates the wants and needs of all sides in a very thorough way. Gerard van Balsfoort said that there is a trend to use an asymmetric TAC constraint to ensure that fishing mortality can be increased appropriately when a stock recovers. The current strategy, however, contains a symmetric TAC constraint and he suggested changing it to an asymmetric constraint. Verena Ohms pointed out that people specifically looked at various forms of TAC constraints, including asymmetrical constraints, but the stakeholders involved in developing the strategy unanimously rejected the idea. The ExCom approved the management strategy and decided to submit it to the Commission as soon as possible. Page 5 of 8

6 The next stock was boarfish and it was suggested to follow the ICES advice based on the precautionary approach and to ask ICES or STECF to confirm the wanted catch advice. It was also proposed to write to the chair of the NWW regional group and ask the regional group to implement the boarfish closures as foreseen in the management strategy. In addition, work on the analytical assessment should continue. The ExCom approved the recommendation. For herring in 6a and 7b,c it was recommended to have a monitoring TAC in 2018 subject to the evaluation of the rebuilding plan, and to continue the industry surveys and the genetics project. Sean O Donoghue also suggested to seek a benchmark once additional scientific information is available. The meeting approved the recommendation. For Celtic Sea herring it was suggested to follow the long-term management strategy provided it is evaluated by STECF to meet article 2.2 of the CFP before the December Council meeting. If not, the ICES advice should be followed. In addition, the mixing issue with Irish Sea herring has to be addressed and the difficulties with the acoustic survey have to be resolved. The recommendation was approved. The final stock was Irish Sea herring for which the ExCom agreed to recommend following the ICES MSY advice, to follow up on the mixing issue with Celtic Sea herring and to commence work on a management strategy. Regarding the choke mitigation tool, the chairman suggested finalizing it for the pelagic situation and to ask Dominic Rihan to present the results on 15 November during the seminar on the landing obligation where he will also present the outcomes for the stocks of the NWW AC. Esben Sverdrup-Jensen said that the tool looked useful, but he wanted to have a couple of meetings to proceed with applying the tool and guiding Dominic Rihan on what he should present. Sean O Donoghue replied that the work presented by Dominic Rihan on the previous day reflected the outcome of the focus group meeting held in Amsterdam on 25 September. He considered it very important to present the results to make people aware that there are some problems with discards in pelagic fisheries. The only task left now is for everyone to go through the sheets and identify if something was missing. Esben Sverdrup-Jensen said that unfortunately he had not been able to join the meeting, but it looked like none of the mitigation tools has been put into the document. Sean O Donoghue explained that some of the tools will not work, in other cases mitigation measures are already being implemented. However, some stocks are left for which people could not identify appropriate solutions. He said that the minutes of the focus group meeting are quite comprehensive and have been uploaded to the website. He asked everyone to have a look at those minutes and to go through the sheets and where necessary provide comments as soon as possible, so that Dominic Rihan can present the results on 15 November. The meeting agreed. 7. Consultation on fishing opportunities (decision) Regarding the consultation on fishing opportunities Verena Ohms explained that in previous years the Pelagic AC has sent a response to the Commission s consultation document and later a separate recommendation containing the stock advice. However, last year the Commission pointed out that it will consider both documents as a response to the consultation on fishing opportunities. Therefore, it was possible to combine both documents into one recommendation. Based on the discussions at the July meeting it was suggested that the recommendation should first include an introduction emphasizing that a key objective of the Pelagic AC is to develop long-term management strategies and to follow these once they have been positively evaluated. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that the economic data presented in the policy statement were of limited use. The meeting agreed. Page 6 of 8

7 8. MIACO meeting January 2017 The chairman explained that the next MIACO meeting will take place on 18 and 19 January He invited suggestions from members for topics to be discussed. Gerard van Balsfoort was getting more concerned about surprising assessment outcomes and he was worried that some of these surprises are the result of insufficient quality control, ranging from data collection to analysis and decisions on how to choose an appropriate model. Another issue related to how to calculate Fmsy. In some stocks Fmsy was very close to Fpa, while in other stocks there were huge differences between Fmsy and Fpa and it seemed to him that ICES uses different methods for different stocks when calculating Fmsy. And finally, he would like to see in the catch options table of the ICES advice a comparison to last year s advice. Claus Reedtz-Sparrevohn agreed that there are different ways to calculate Fmsy and ICES uses different approaches for different stocks. However, it was not always clear which approach ICES used for which stock and he thought that ICES should be more transparent about that. For example, some Fmsy values have a precautionary constraint and the value could be improved by having a less noisy assessment. In relation to the quality concern Sean O Donoghue pointed out that this issue has already been raised at the last MIACO meeting. He suggested following-up on that. He also said that there will be a premeeting again only for ICES and the ACs and it was necessary to prepare both meetings. In terms of stock advice ICES provides very valuable input, but he would like to see ICES becoming more involved in helping with long-term management strategies. He was aware that that was difficult for ICES and he was not looking for ICES endorsing any plans, but rather provide some help during development. This would be particularly useful for stocks like western horse mackerel which is very difficult to assess. Esben Sverdrup-Jensen said that there was a list of issues from WG I that needs to be repeated. He also wanted to ask ICES to publish the advice a week earlier to give people more time to prepare for the Pelagic AC meetings. Another issue from WG I is the level of information provided in the advice sheets. For example, the reference points for North Sea herring have changed, but ICES still gives advice according to the management strategy which contains the old reference points and he would like ICES to state that clearly in the advice. Also, the difference between wanted and unwanted catches is not easy to understand and ICES should provide more clarity on this. Last year there was an interesting discussion on the cost efficiency of surveys and ICES said that 90% of all resources are used for surveys and only 10% is used on everything else. However, it seemed to him that modelling and data processing could need more resources. Maybe it would be a good idea to cut the costs on surveys and put more resources into modelling and processing. Goncalo Carvalho agreed that clarity and transparency are very important and he supported raising the issues mentioned. It was decided to prepare a list of issues and circulate it to members, so they can comment on and add to the list. 9. AOB The chairman announced that there will be an Inter AC meeting on 14 November which Sean O Donoghue, Goncalo Carvalho and Verena Ohms will attend on behalf of the Pelagic AC. He invited suggestions from members for issues to be raised at that meeting. Sean O Donoghue said that an obvious question to the Commission will concern their response to the ACs post BREXIT and whether there will be some sort of amendment to the ACs. He said that there was also some clarity needed regarding the new delegated act on AC membership. It was not clear to him Page 7 of 8

8 whether the members of the General Assembly will vote on the entire membership or only within their respective groups. Gerard van Balsfoort thought that it would probably be too early to ask the Commission about a post BREXIT scenario. Goncalo Carvalho believed that BREXIT should be raised nevertheless. Regarding the new delegated act he thought that it is up to each AC how to use the tool provided in the AC. In the SWW AC it should certainly be used, but he was not sure that that will be the case. 10. End of meeting The chairman closed the meeting at 12:00 hrs and thanked all participants for their commitment and willingness to find compromises which is one of the main qualities of the Pelagic AC. Action items Discuss the consequences of BREXIT for the functioning of the ACs at February meeting () Arrange next AC meeting on BREXIT, possibly back-to-back with the April meeting (chairman, secretariat) Submit recommendations from the Working Groups to the Commission (secretariat) Use written procedure for repeating the footnote recommendation (secretariat, ExCom) Provide comments on the choke mitigation tool before 1 November 2017 (all members) Prepare a list with issues to be raised at the MIACO meeting and circulate it to all members for comments (secretariat) Raise BREXIT and new delegated act on AC membership at Inter AC meeting (Sean O Donoghue, Goncalo Carvalho, Verena Ohms) Page 8 of 8