Ms Melanie Gomes:

I thank the Chairman for inviting me here today. I am here representing BirdWatch Ireland, but this presentation is also on behalf of the Irish Wildlife Trust and Coastwatch Ireland.

The title of my presentation is "Ending Over-fishing: The Setting of Total Allowable Catches for 2015". Setting correct fishing opportunities is fundamental to achieving the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy - namely, to end over-fishing and restore and maintain fish stocks above levels capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield. I will go into that later. I will cover the current situation as well as the consequences of ignoring the scientific advice ecologically and economically, the tools we have to implement the changes, and recommendations to the committee.

To set the scene, I am using a historical slide of the biomass of table fish in 1900. Biomass is basically a quantitative estimate of the total weight of commercial fish people would have eaten in 1900. The slide shows that around Ireland and on both sides of the Atlantic, there were over 8 tonnes of fish per square kilometre. The figure for Ireland was between 8 and 10 tonnes. If we skip on to 2000, we can see that there has been a reduction, with eight to ten times less biomass. These historical figures give an idea of what was there. According to figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization this year, 90% of global fish stocks are either fully fished or over-fished. I will explain later why this is not good for us economically.

As regards European stocks, there has been an increase in over-fished stocks from 39% to 41% in the north-east Atlantic since last year. The rate of over-fishing has also increased. In 2014, total allowable catches, TACs, were set at 35% above scientific advice. That was over three times more than the 2012 figures, which were 11% above the advice. The situation has therefore become worse. A crucial point is that fishery scientists set the advice according to what they believe will be saleable. Over-fishing has led to reduced profitability in the sector, with a rate of employment loss of 4% to 5% per year.

Not only is the setting of correct TACs and quotas fundamental to the achievement of the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy - namely, to end over-fishing and to restore and maintain fish stocks above levels capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield - but there is also a requirement under the CFP to favour more sustainable fishing vessels and to recycle. Member states should endeavour to give preferential access to small-scale artisan or coastal fishermen. I will not go into all the details because I do not have time.

The next slide shows the fixed quota allocation of 117 vessels from Northern Ireland. One vessel alone has over 50%. There is more to that, including what species are being fished. There are a couple of vessels under 10%, while the remaining 113 have 2% of the quota.

I looked for the Southern data but it is not publicly available. This relates to the recommendation in the report on sustainable rural and island communities as presented by the committee.
What are the consequences of ignoring the fisheries advice ecologically and economically? This relates directly to ecosystems, services and biodiversity. Biodiversity is the wealth of life on the planet - everything to small planktonic organisms to large fish and whales. Why is it so important? It relates to the healthy functioning of the marine ecosystem, particularly marine food webs. If there is an imbalance caused by a loss of biodiversity, this has knock-on implications for commercial and non-commercial species alike. Examples of ecosystem services include the assimilation of atmospheric gas and climate regulation. The oceans absorb 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per day. One predicted change is that mussels are expected to calcify, or make their shells, 25% more slowly by the year 2100. What does this mean for some of the commercial fisheries? Resilience is one of the key things about the importance of biodiversity. Biodiversity provides the resilience - the ability to bounce back and recover after both natural and anthropogenic, or human-induced, pressures.
Waste assimilation and nutrient recycling, food provision and productivity - these are all things I will not go into for time reasons. Biodiversity is also important from the point of view of social and cultural values - for example, consider the value of marine tourism. In a nutshell, marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality and recover from perturbations. The available data suggests that trends are reversible if addressed by urgent and effective action. To illustrate the consequences, a leading scientist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Professor Jeremy Jackson, has stated: "Ecological extinction caused by overfishing precedes all other pervasive human disturbance to coastal ecosystems, including pollution, degradation of water quality, and anthropogenic climate change."He also stated: "Today, the synergistic effects of human impacts are laying the groundwork for a comparably great Anthropocene mass extinction in the oceans with unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences." Therefore, overfishing is a really important issue.
The slide entitled "Fishing down marine food webs" shows what has happened in, say, the Irish Sea. I apologise for the quality of the slide. At the top left of the slide, one can see large fish such as cod that would have been very prevalent in the past. As we fish further down the food chain, it is the invertebratesat the bottom, such as Dublin Bay prawns or nephrops, which become major fisheries, but below that there is not much to fish. Nephrops have a very high discard rate and, of course, discarding juveniles does not help them to recover. Implementation of the discards ban will be crucial in meeting the CFP targets effectively.
What does this mean for economics? The New Economics Foundation published a report in 2013 which showed that restoring 43 overfished European stocks to a biomass that supported their maximum sustainable yield, MSY - that is, the largest amount of fish that can be taken from the water while still leaving enough to produce new generations - would allow the landing of 3.5 million tonnes more fish each year, an additional €3.5 billion in revenues each year and 100,000 new jobs, or 31% more, in the EU fishing sector. It is important to remember that the MSY is a maximum limit.

The 2008 Sunken Billions report stated the economic losses in marine fisheries resulting from poor management, inefficiencies and overfishing added up to a staggering €40 billion per year. This report also argued well-managed marine fisheries could turn most of these losses into sustainable economic benefits for millions of fishers and coastal communities. It is not too late.

What tools do we have to implement change? First, there is the reformed Common Fisheries Policy which came into force on 1 January 2014. According to Article 2(2) of the policy, fishing opportunities must be set with the objective of progressively restoring and maintaining populations of fish stocks above biomass levels capable of producing MSY, maximum sustainable yield. This needs to be achieved by 2015 where possible and progressively and incrementally for all stocks not later than 2020. We need to restore stocks to levels above BMSY, biomass maximum sustainable yield, and fishing pressure needs to be reduced below FMSY fishing mortality maximum sustainable yield. Once above BMSY levels, stocks should be fished at rates slightly below FMSY to account for scientific uncertainty and fluctuations in stock sizes. Fishing below FMSY would also bring economic benefits due to the reduced costs of fishing on abundant stocks. In Australia, the maximum economic yield is 10% to 20% above the maximum sustainable yield. By doing so, it is taking less fish as a way of managing stocks.

The TACs, total allowable catch, decided at the forthcoming December Council will be set under that framework for the first time. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Simon Coveney, will be representing Ireland to agree all the TACs. He will need to follow the legal requirement to set TACs in line with MSY objectives, subject to these deadlines. The onus is on Ministers to achieve the 2015 deadline with their decisions in December or explain why and how they will do it incrementally by some date up to 2020 instead.

There is additional legislation under EU environmental legislation such as the habitats directive, the birds directive and the marine strategy framework directive which has direct links to the Common Fisheries Policy. Changes to management of fisheries activities may be necessary for member states to meet these requirements. Article 11 of the reformed policy outlines the processes for adopting conservation measures to meet these environmental requirements.

Other measures include marine reserves or no-take zones, NTZs, which are areas fully closed to fishing and other activities. They form an essential component to any ecologically coherent marine protected area network to help secure a healthy ecological foundation. While they are not the only solutions, they are so effective at protecting and restoring biodiversity that they should be being maximised. We need the political will to do this. For example, increases were recorded of up to 100% of commercial scallops from the Isle of Man mobile gear closure of 2 sq. km in 1989, as well as a greater abundance in upright seabed fauna that has been linked to increases in the collection of scallop spat. Marine reserves can also have a positive effect on local tourism. For example, the 5.5 sq. km Leigh marine reserve in New Zealand attracts over 100,000 visitors per year and brings approximately NZ $20 million to the local economy each year.

The closure of the Georges Bank fishing area off the American east coast saw the greatest economic lay-off in history. Following the closure, scallop numbers increased approximately tenfold while haddock catches were between two to 15 times greater at the reserve boundary than elsewhere. Now 73% of the entire United States haddock catch is taken within 5 km of the closed area boundaries. Cod stocks, however, never recovered and are still an ongoing problem as they were overfished.

Set up in 2003, the UK’s first marine reserve, NTZ, was Lundy Island off the north Devon coast.

It allows stocks of commercial species to regenerate quickly. There has been a significant increase in the abundance of lobster and crab inside the NTZ - more than seven times as many. More breeding lobsters are also to be found inside the protected area. Other studies report that lobsters and their larvae then spill over. When they do, they go from inside the reserve to outside, benefiting local fishermen. One of the reasons this worked so well was local fishermen and the local community backed the project and it was wonderful to see it working it so well to help them and management of the sea.

I refer to our recommendations to the committee. Total allowable catches, TACs, must not exceed the scientific advice. ICES advises a level of catch consistent with the maximum sustainable yield, MSY. If the catches set by Fisheries Ministers exceed this, stocks will not recover and grow, ultimately hitting the fishing industry's bottom line. TACs in line with scientific advice on MSY have to be set for all stocks by 2015, where possible, and by 2020 in any event. Delays in achievement of this beyond this year's TAC decisions at the December Council are only possible if the social and economic sustainability of the fleet is not to be seriously jeopardised. If the 2015 deadline is not achieved, evidence of serious jeopardy must be provided and TACs that do not exceed MSY advice must be implemented progressively and incrementally before 2020. Any increase in the TAC for stocks subject to the discards ban - the landing obligation - must be subject to supporting evidence from ICES and limited in scope to ensure the total out-take will not jeopardise the CFP's MSY objectives.

  We need to allow for both natural and anthropogenic or human induced threats, unknown ecosystem interactions and mismanagement, known as the precautionary approach. TACs should be even more precautionary when there is more uncertainty. Ireland’s ecologically marine protected area, MPA, network needs to be implemented as a matter of urgency following best practice guidelines such as the IUCN and examples that have worked elsewhere environmentally, economically and socially. There should be a subset of community backed marine reserves or NTZs as a part of this. When policy is being made, the input of the environmentalists and ecologists needs to be listened to because that is the baseline for the social and economic long-term sustainability of fisheries, otherwise they will not be sustainable. I hope some of this will be taken on board following my appearance before the committee. I thank the committee very much.