Dr. Cecil Beamish:

Each of the member states reports monthly on the catch of its fleet and all of this information is collated at European level. The catches are also shared with scientists who feed this information into their assessment of the state of the stocks. A number of our stocks have been improving. In the past three or four years, we have had significant improvements in the commercial fisheries in the north west, which had not been in a good place previously. We also had some signs of recovery in the Irish Sea, particularly in the haddock fishery, and last year we had the first signs of recovery in Irish Sea cod in many years. There are scenarios where cod stocks in broad terms have been improving and more stocks have been at maximum sustainable yield level. There are always stocks increasing and decreasing.