WHITING is unquestionably leading the list of concerns in terms of North Sea quota exhaustion, a fish producer organisation chief warned today.
Robert Stevenson, the chief executive of the North East of Scotland Fishermen’s Organisation, called on UK fisheries administrators to pay “particular attention” to the need to keep whiting going for as long as possible.
Mr Stevenson said that North Sea whiting uptake was running at 63% in UK terms but the main Scottish fish producer groupings were more than 70% exhausted in terms of their own catches.
In UK terms, the estimate was around 14 weeks fishing left of the species in the North Sea at current levels, but an urgent need was to win more whiting for the UK in the meantime from other EU member states.
“Hopefully, we will get some more whiting in, but the UK administrators need to address this.”
Meanwhile outside the EU, Norway was sitting on “thousands of tonnes” of unused whiting which was a “travesty” in his view.
In an EU context, one possible source of whiting for the UK would be Denmark although the country might be reticent about letting any go due to industrial by-catch considerations.
“Whiting is our biggest concern and a major problem is eking out the fishery until the end of the year”
The situation has been worsened this year due to a cut in the total allowable catch but any early closure of the fishery would be a disaster given the cod, haddock and whiting dependency of the Scottish fleet and the fact that all are caught in the same net.
For a whiting closure would be bound to spark an unpalatable increase in dumping.
The North Sea saithe quota is also running out fast with North Sea haddock catching now starting to pick up again.
Meanwhile, Mike Park, the executive chairman of the Scottish White Fish Producers’ Association, agreed today that the threat of early whiting quota exhaustion was a major problem.
The problem was that most other member states were using their own whiting, but the main and wider focus should now be to attach reference points to the stock and create a proper long term management plan for it.
“The lack of a long-term management plan tends to reduce the total allowable catch figure and this short- term focus simply increases discards. We have to get away from ad hoc management of this stock.”
Meanwhile as well as plentiful prawn and white fish by-catch landings, Fraserburgh last week saw scallopers plus steady mackerel landings from the under 10m fleet .
*One Fraserburgh-registered prawn boat has been allowed home after being taken into Stavanger by the Norwegian authorities and ordered to lodge a bond before the vessel was released pending possible court action.
Should people be 'stimulated' to eat white fish alternatives to cod?
