The international marine conservation organisation, Oceana, has sent the European Commission a study analyzing the failures in management of the total allowable catch (TAC) system. The EC will table this Friday 16 October its proposal on 2010 TACs and quotas and Oceana advises that these factors be taken into consideration before blaming the TAC system for the failure in current fisheries policy.
Various sectors are promoting the idea of substituting the TAC system with one based exclusively on fishing effort control (e.g. assigning each vessel a number of days to fish) when the reformed Common Fisheries Policy enters into force in 2013.
According to the Oceana analysis, 78% of the scientific recommendations for catch quotas have been ignored over the past 20 years, and catch recommendations have been greatly exceeded. The European Commission itself warns that, in 2009 alone, adopted TACs exceeded the sustainable volume of catches by 48%. The lack of regulation and control is such that in some stocks real extraction of biomass is up to five times higher than the initially agreed TAC.
With this analysis, Oceana denounces the lack of rigour in some initiatives focused on eliminating a key element in fisheries policy: the establishment of catch limits.