Dr. Ciaran Kelly:

On Deputy Whitmore's question, the concern here relates to the trends we see in fishing pressure. The number of stocks exploited at or below the rate of fishing mortality consistent with achieving maximum sustainable yield, FMSY, is going up and therefore, fishing pressure is coming down. We would expect to see a commensurate response in the stocks themselves so that the biological status of the stocks - these biological reference points - should also be following the same trend. We do not see that. That may speak to first-order changes in the environment driving second-order processes in relation to recruitment, growth and maturity in these stocks. In other words, the conditions that we have expected to get maximum sustainable yields, MSYs, may no longer hold.