Pelagic AC meeting 4 October 2017 10:00-12:30 hrs Parkhotel Molenstraat 53, 2513 BJ Den Haag The Netherlands Louis Braillelaan 80 2719 EK Zoetermeer The Netherlands Phone: +31 (0)63 375 6324 E-mail: info@pelagic-ac.org Website: www.pelagic-ac.org Participants Esben Sverdrup-Jensen, chair Anne-Mette Bæk Jespersen Ashley Wilson Aukje Coers Bart Andriaenssens Carl Jesper Hermansen Carmen Abad Carmen Fernandez Claus Reedtz Sparrevohn Delphine Roncin Dominic Rihan Frank Fleming Gerard van Balsfoort Goncalo Carvalho Hugo Mendes Ian Gatt Ignacio Fontaneda Lopez Jerome Jourdain Jerome Nouis Jesper Raakjær John Ward José Beltran Justyna Zajchowska Karin Victorin Leon Bouts Lisbet Nielsen Mads Larsson Martin Pastoors Matthew Clarke Matthew Cox Miren Garmendia Patrick Murphy Piebe Hotsma Danish Pelagic Producers Organisation EU Fishmeal The Pew Charitable Trusts Rederij Vrolijk Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management Danish Fishermen PO Federación Provincial de Cofradías de Pescadores de Lugo ICES Danish Pelagic Producers Organisation From Nord BIM Celtic Sea Herring Management Advisory Committee Pelagic Freezer-trawler Association Sciaena Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera Scottish Pelagic Fishermen s Association S.G. Caladero Nacional, Aguas Comunitarias y Acuicultura, Secretaría General de Pesca UAPF UAPF University of Aalborg Irish Fish PO OPLUGO The Pew Charitable Trusts Ministry for Enterprise and Innovation Sweden EFCA Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries AIPCE Pelagic Freezer-trawler Association Permanent Representation of Ireland to the EU National Federation of Fishermen s Organisation OPEGUI Irish South & West PO Ministry of Economic Affairs Netherlands Page 1 of 9
Reine J. Johansson Rob Banning Rob Pronk Romain Soisson Sean O Donoghue Steven Mackinson Verena Ohms Wietze Kampen Swedish Pelagic Federation Parlevliet en van der Plas Van der Zwan Compagnie des Pêches St-Malo Killybegs Fishermen s Organisation Scottish Fishermen s Federation Pelagic AC European Transport Worker s Federation 1. Opening of the meeting by the chairman, Esben Sverdrup-Jensen The chairman opened the meeting at 10:05 and welcomed the participants, especially the new faces. A tour de table followed. He announced that Carl Jesper Hermansen and Jerome Nouis will be retiring at the end of this year and hence this marked their last Pelagic AC meeting. 2. Adoption of the agenda The agenda was adopted without amendments. 3. Follow-up on action items The first action item was to circulate the results of the acoustic studies carried out in the Bay of Biscay once available. Jerome Jourdain explained that the project is delayed, because priority was given to other projects dealing with demersal fisheries and de minimis. However, one of the companies carrying out acoustic research recently published a study report with comparative data for pelagic fisheries in the North Sea and demersal species in the US. He promised to forward the report to the secretariat for circulation. He expected that the acoustic project in the Bay of Biscay will be finished before the end of the year. The second action item has been completed and concerned the circulation of the draft advice for North Sea and Western Baltic spring spawning herring. The third action item was in relation to WKIRISH. Sean O Donoghue has signed up to participate in the meeting on behalf of the Pelagic AC, but other members could still register if interested. The next item was to circulate the research plan for the horse mackerel genetics project. The plan is not available yet, but the chairman expected it to be ready soon. Sean O Donoghue clarified that there is an agreement with UCD and Ed Farrell to carry out the analysis, but details will not be available until next year. The next action item was for ICES to check whether there is any information available on herring bycatch in the brown shrimp fishery. ICES said that it has not produced estimates of herring bycatch in that fishery, however, published reports 1 indicate that there is some herring bycatch. 1 Catchpole T.L., Revill, A.S., Innes, J., Pascoe, S., 2008. Evaluating the efficacy of technical measures: a case study of selection device legislation in the UK Crangon crangon (brown shrimp) fishery. ICES Journal of Marine Science 65:267 275 Page 2 of 9
Another action item concerned the participation in the herring benchmark and preceding data collection workshop. Any interested members can sign up for it through the secretariat. The chairman asked what to expect from the benchmark other than that reference points will be updated. Claus Reedtz-Sparrevohn said that it is too early to predict what will come out of the benchmark, but most people think that the perception of the stock will not change much. Natural mortality will be updated at the benchmark which might lead to some changes. The chairman said that if anyone wanted to raise any issues for the benchmark, then these will have to be brought forward at the data collection workshop at the latest. The final action item was to have a discussion on the ICES fisheries overview to decide how to deal with that type of advice. The fisheries overview could be important for the ecosystem approach and the chairman would like the Pelagic AC to provide input. However, it has to be postponed to the February meeting since there is not enough time today. 4. Fishing opportunities 2018: presentation of ICES advice by Carmen Fernandez (information) The chairman invited Carmen Fernandez to present the recently published ICES stock advice. Carmen Fernandez explained that the beginning of her presentation included the principles of how ICES provides advice. Due to time constraints it was not possible to present those details, but interested people could have a look at the presentation after the meeting. Besides, the same information has already been presented by ICES at the July meeting. Blue whiting Carmen Fernandez said that the assessment of blue whiting is very similar to what it has been in the last years. However, it was new to follow the long-term management strategy agreed, Norway and the Faroe Islands. SSB is above MSY Btrigger, but F is above Fmsy. Recruitment in recent years has been above average, but was low in 2017. When that year class will enter the fishery in 2019 there could be a reduction in fishing opportunities. ICES evaluated the long-term management strategy and found it to be precautionary. The strategy has a TAC constraint of 20% down and 25% up if applied. However, the TAC constraint is used under very specific circumstances only, namely when SSB in the TAC year and in the preceding year have both been above Bpa and when the change in TAC is less than or equal to 40%. This year the long-term management strategy results in Fmsy. Catch in 2016 was 1.183 million tonnes. The discard ratio is below 0.5%. 98% of the landings are from pelagic trawl, the rest comes from bottom-trawl. 90% of the catch is taken in the first two quarters of the year. The catch advice for 2018 follows the long-term management strategy and because SSB is high, Fmsy (=0.32) is applied directly. This would lead to a change in catch of -11% and result in a TAC of 1 387 872 tonnes. Steenbergen, J., Ulleweit, J., Machiels, M., Nijman, R., Panten, K., van Helmond, E. 2015. Discards Sampling of the Dutch and German Brown Shrimp Fisheries in 2009 2012; Stichting DLO Centre for Fisheries Research (CVO); Wageningen; CVO report: 15.003 Ulleweit, J., Stransky, C., Panten, K. 2010. Discards and discarding practices in German fisheries in the North Sea and Northeast Atlantic during 2002 2008. J.Appl.Ichthyol. 26: 54-66. Page 3 of 9
Gerard van Balsfoort said that the TAC constraint is applied on a TAC basis and hence an 11% reduction in catch has no impact on whether the constraint is applied or not. Instead, people have to look at the TACs when deciding whether to apply the constraint or not. Carmen Fernandez confirmed that this was correct. However, when ICES evaluated the harvest control rule (HCR), it assumed that the catches follow the TAC. There are many reasons why the actual catch might deviate from the TAC, but this cannot be evaluated in the simulations and ICES can only assess how the rule would perform if it is exactly implemented. As far as she was aware there was no internationally agreed TAC in 2017 and ICES based its 2017 catch assumption on the sum of declared quotas. This should be sufficiently close to any kind of TAC people might imagine for 2017. Sean O Donoghue said that it can be confusing to look at the percentage catch change. Instead he thought it would be useful to have a comparison with the previous ICES advice to see whether that has increased or decreased. In regards to the TAC constraint he understood that there was a NEAFC request asking for an evaluation of that part of the management strategy and he wanted to know whether ICES has dealt with that. Carmen Fernandez said that the management strategy evaluation she presented last year in October concerned the same strategy, but a different TAC constraint. In her understanding that TAC constraint was discussed by the Coastal States with the outcome to request ICES to provide advice according to the rule she presented today. She said that this evaluation should have been published with the working group report this year and she promised to check. She also explained that this issue concerned a simple re-run of the code that was already there and did not require any discussions. The outcome was presented as a working document to ADGWIDE which accepted it. There had been no extensive review, because it was just re-running the model with the updated TAC constraint. Sean O Donoghue had expected this to be published with the advice on the ICES website. However, he did not see it there. Carmen Fernandez promised to check, but as far as she was aware there was no special request in this regard, but only direct communication between ICES and the clients without any sort of formal request. Regarding Sean O Donoghue s other comment in regards to having a column in the advice table that compares this year s advice with the previous advice, she said that it was possible to show all kinds of comparison and ICES was not even consistent across stocks. If the AC decided to submit a formal request to include this comparison, she could bring it up with ICES. Sean O Donoghue said that his intention was not to delete a column, but simply to add one. The first thing everyone does is compare the ICES advice with last year s advice. Since this is not a point of principle, it could be easily added. Carmen Fernandez agreed and said that she will let ICES know. Atlanto-Scandian herring SSB of Atlanto-Scandian herring has been declining steadily and is now below MSY Btrigger, even though F is below Fmsy. The last large recruitment was in 2006. For 2018 ICES advised to follow the long-term management plan agreed, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway and Russia. This would result in a TAC of 546 472 tonnes. Carmen Fernandez also pointed out that there will be a re-evaluation of reference points and of the management plan in 2018 which could lead to some changes in reference points next year. Gerard van Balsfoort said that fishing mortality has been very low already for a number of years and the realized F is far below the F in the management plans. However, looking at table 2 it seemed that the F on ages 5 to 11 is 0.163 which is above Fmsy. He did not understand how that was possible. Page 4 of 9
Carmen Fernandez replied that catch data are only available until 2016 and that ICES has to make assumptions about 2017 in order to provide a forecast of the stock to the beginning of 2018, so that ICES can provide an assessment for 2018. The F Gerard van Balsfoort was referring to is due to the assumptions made in 2017. So, in 2017 ICES assumes that the catch will be 805 kt which is based on declared national quotas and marks a big increase in the TAC compared to the previous year, hence resulting in a high F. Sean O Donoghue was concerned about the recruitment estimate for 2017 which seemed to be above average. Carmen Fernandez said that recruitment in 2017 is estimated by the assessment, but has already been seen in several surveys and should be relatively reliable. North Sea horse mackerel Carmen Fernandez explained that horse mackerel has a complex stock structure and is currently divided into three stocks, one of them in the North Sea. Catches in areas 3a and 4a are allocated to the North Sea stock only in quarter 1 and 2. Catches in that area in quarter 3 and 4 are allocated to the Western stock. ICES does not have an analytical assessment for this stock, but the recent benchmark came up with a stock abundance index from groundfish surveys. Complete discard estimates have only been available since recent years. Discarding is negligible in pelagic fisheries, but there is essential discarding in bottom-trawl fisheries that do not target horse mackerel, amounting to about 13% of total catches. ICES expects that discard rates have been similar in previous years, but data are only available for 2015 and 2016. ICES provides biannual advice for this stock and follows the precautionary approach. That means that the same catch advice will apply for 2018 and 2019. For stocks in category 3 and 4, as is the case for North Sea horse mackerel, ICES is now developing proxies for MSY reference points where it takes into account the mean length of individual fish. Even though the stock remains at a low level, there have been signs of improvement with recruitment signals being higher since 2013. Nevertheless, the assessment is noisy and therefore ICES applied an uncertainty cap that does not allow changes bigger or smaller than 20%. Every three years ICES also checks whether the precautionary buffer should be applied. Since this buffer has last been applied in 2014, ICES checked it again this year and considered it relevant to apply the buffer, because fishing mortality is above the Fmsy proxy. This means ICES derived the advice for 2018 by taking the advice for 2017 and multiplying it with both the uncertainty cap and the precautionary buffer. Gerard van Balsfoort said that the discard data from STECF are much higher than the 13% indicated by ICES and he wondered why there was such a large discrepancy between discard data from ICES compared to STECF. He said that the discard estimates should be as precise as possible when advising a quota top-up. Carmen Fernandez was not aware of this discrepancy, but she remembered that about three years ago ICES and STECF compared discard estimates. John Simmonds had been involved in the process from the ICES side. Her recollection of that process was that it had been concluded that ICES discard estimates were of better quality. However, she indicated she was just speaking from memory and would follow up on this. Sean O Donoghue explained that the STECF data are broken down better than the ICES data. It was correct that the ICES are of a better quality and more reliable. However, the problem is that the ICES data are not disaggregated. This had also been discussed at the focus group meeting on the choke mitigation tool. Page 5 of 9
5. Adoption of PELAC advice (decision) The chairman thanked Carmen Fernandez for her presentation and said that the AC now had a good basis for providing its own advice. Blue whiting The chairman summarized that ICES provides advice according to the management strategy agreed by the Coastal States which would result in 11% less catch in 2018. He supported the wish for another column in the advice table that shows a comparison with the ICES advice of the previous year and said he would bring it up at next year s MIACO meeting. Gerard van Balsfoort suggested following the ICES advice. Goncalo Carvalho also wanted to follow the ICES advice. The chairman concluded that he will draft a recommendation supporting the ICES advice to be approved by the Executive Committee on the following day. Atlanto-Scandian herring The chairman summarized that following the management plan for this stock will result in 32% less catch. He invited comments from meeting participants. Gerard van Balsfoort again supported following the management plan. He also pointed out that there was still the issue with a small triangle in area 2 where the EU fleet is not allowed to fish Atlanto- Scandian herring. He has already complained previously about this regulation, which stems from the 1990ies and is now obsolete. Even though it will be revised in the Technical Measures Regulation, this can still take a while and he would like the problem to be corrected as soon as possible. Non-EU fleets are catching herring in that area and the EU fleet should be allowed to do the same. The chairman agreed that this was a very absurd situation. On the one hand there was a risk that the EU will not have access to Norwegian waters and at the same time will not be allowed to catch in its own waters. This was creating unnecessarily difficult problems for the industry. The Working Group decided to follow the management plan. North Sea horse mackerel Sean O Donoghue wanted to follow the ICES advice, but also said that the major discard problem, already highlighted last year, has not been resolved. He said that if the issue is not being resolved soon, the management of this stock will be heading in the wrong direction. Once the landing obligation enters into full force, these discards will become catches and the white fish fleet has the potential to close the pelagic fishery, unless management measures will be put in place to address the problem. He said that the Pelagic AC had to highlight this matter again and emphasize that this is a management, not a science problem. Gerard van Balsfoort added that the industry is doing a lot of work on horse mackerel to move it out of the data-limited stock category, including work on genetics, surveys and the protection of juveniles. This means that the pelagic fleet is investing a lot of money to restore the stock, while another fleets undoes all the work. Having ICES and STECF disagree on the discard data makes things even worse and he feared that soon half of the TAC will be bycatch. He wanted to send a very strong signal to the Commission that this issue had to be solved. Page 6 of 9
Goncalo Carvalho understood these worries and agreed that they had to be taken into account. In Portugal the species was mostly caught in demersal fisheries. He also considered it very important to solve the data issues. Regarding the TAC itself he recalled that last year everyone agreed on recommending the wanted catch advice and he wanted to know if people could agree to this again this year. Sean O Donoghue was concerned that this will not solve the issue. He was not against recommending the landing value, but pointed out that then next year there might be an even higher discard rate since there will be no new advice. Discarding caused a problem that needed to be addressed. The chairman was willing to draft a firm recommendation for this stock, but said that there are different ways to approach the issue. On the one hand, the discards could be allocated appropriately to the fleets, but this will not solve the problem. On the other hand, it could be recommended how to avoid bycatches in the first place. However, that will require more information on how these fleets operate. He concluded to work on a recommendation offline and to present it at the Executive Committee meeting the next day. Jerome Jourdain said that about 50% of the discards are form the French demersal fishery which he thought was the biggest discard source. He suggested identifying the various sources of discards and find solutions specific for those fleets. Esben Sverdrup-Jensen considered this a good suggestion and decided to set a pre-2019 deadline. Goncalo Carvalho said that he was happy to discuss any of the tools provided in the CFP. North Sea autumn spawning herring Regarding North Sea herring the chairman pointed out that the advice had already been dealt with in July and that the draft recommendation has been uploaded to the website prior to the meeting. The recommendation is very much in line with what has been recommended last year. The meeting approved the recommendation. Western Baltic spring spawning herring The advice for Western Baltic spring spawning herring is closely linked to the advice for North Sea herring and the draft recommendation had also been uploaded to the website. There were no comments and the meeting adopted the draft recommendation. 6. Update on the blue whiting focus group (information) The chairman invited Claus Reedtz-Sparrevohn to provide an update on the work carried out recently by the focus group on blue whiting and by Dankert Skagen. Claus Reedtz-Sparrevohn said that Dankert Skagen has explored a lot of different aspects about the management of a stock like blue whiting which is characterized by large fluctuations in recruitment. He did not plan to focus on the details and technical aspects, but instead provide a global overview. The reports prepared by Dankert Skagen were also available on the website for those who wanted to have a closer look. The reason the Pelagic AC decided to look into blue whiting are the big shifts in productivity. Around 2000 the stock was in a high recruitment regime, followed by a low recruitment regime and now it seems to be back to a high recruitment regime again. These changes also reflect how the stock could be exploited and the Pelagic AC came up with the idea of a two-tier management strategy where there Page 7 of 9
is a higher exploitation level at large stock size and a lower exploitation level at low stock size. However, Dankert Skagen s recent work has made people aware that it was necessary to take a step back and look at the mechanism underlying the shift between different productivity regimes, i.e. how to find out that there was a shift from one regime to another. The idea is that there are different measures that can be looked at to identify whether there has been a shift in recruitment, i.e. SSB, TSB and recruitment directly. A lot of management strategies have TAC constraints and often there is a rule that says that the constraint is not applied anymore if SSB has been below the trigger point for two years. However, Dankert Skagen s work shows that SSB probably reacts too slowly and it might be better to use recruitment as an indicator instead. In his simulations Dankert Skagen used recruitments that follow a similar pattern as what has been observed in reality, i.e. moving from a high recruitment regime to a very low regime and back. Subsequently he evaluated a number of management strategies, including the ICES standard rule and the rule currently being used. He also looked at a strategy where F is scaled to the recruitment level. This was a completely new idea and worth exploring. It seemed that this recruitment-dependent F rule works well; posing a low risk, but giving satisfactory catch at low inter-annual variability. Using TSB instead of SSB and a harvest rate instead of F also seems to work well. The ICES standard rule on the other hand was not the best rule tested, because F does not adjust properly to changes in productivity. However, one problem is that there is no good recruitment estimate for blue whiting which would be a pre requisite for an F rule dependent on recruitment. It is also important to consider what should trigger a change in management, i.e. SSB, TSB or recruitment. The take home message was that a good recruitment index was key for this stock. If changes in recruitment can be detected early and reliably, then this could improve the management of the stock considerably. Carmen Fernandez found the presentation very interesting and agreed that it was good to explore new things that could work better for the stock. However, she also pointed out that recent recruitment has been quite uncertain and the evaluation would have to take that into account. Claus Reedtz-Sparrevohn agreed. He explained that Dankert Skagen was aware of this and therefore used the average of the last three years and smoothed it. Carmen Fernandez pointed out that recruitment estimates are not only relevant for detecting a change in recruitment regime, but that people also have to keep in mind that an estimate does not necessarily match real recruitment. The chairman said that one of the most important points discussed in the focus group was how to improve recruitment estimates. The blue whiting survey takes place in the middle of the fishery and maybe the fleet could be involved in providing some extra data. Gerard van Balsfoort was surprised that Dankert Skagen came up with recruitment as an indicator given that estimating SSB has proven less difficult even though this was difficult enough. It seemed to him like wishful thinking. Claus Reedtz-Sparrevohn admitted that it was partly wishful thinking since there was no good recruitment index. Nevertheless, it was good to explore options, because SSB simply reacts too slowly. Sean O Donoghue who is a member of the focus group, added that Dankert Skagen also found that the standard ICES MSY rule is not precautionary enough in some instances, even though ICES has evaluated it to be precautionary. This was something to be addressed. Furthermore, he was very confident that Dankert Skagen took the uncertainty in relation to recruitment into account. This was clear from his report which he encouraged everyone to read. Page 8 of 9
The chairman clarified that Dankert Skagen s full report is on the website. He also hoped to arrange the next focus group meeting ahead of the February meeting. Goncalo Carvalho wanted to know how the fact that ICES now uses the management strategy agreed by NEAFC will change the work of the focus group. Claus Reedtz-Sparrevohn replied that Dankert Skagen s work can still be used for a generic discussion on how to deal with stocks that have huge fluctuations. It might also turn out that using a recruitment index could be useful to decide when to apply a TAC constraint or not. The chairman added that he hoped to develop a strategy that can better deal with a stock like blue whiting and that the Coastal States will be open to look at new options. He considered the ongoing work worth the effort. 7. AOB Justyna Zajchowska wanted to consider organizing the future October meeting a little later, so that people would have more time to prepare for the meeting. The chairman agreed that having more preparation time is desirable. However, the Commission always asks the Pelagic AC to provide its advice as soon as possible since the EU-Norway and the Coastal States negotiations start shortly after the release of the ICES advice. 8. End of meeting The chairman closed the meeting at 12:35 hrs. Action items Forward report of acoustic studies in the North Sea and US demersal fisheries to the secretariat for circulation (Jerome Jourdain) Circulate report for acoustic studies in the Bay of Biscay once available (Jerome Jourdain) Circulate research plan for genetics project on horse mackerel once available (chairman, secretariat) Discuss ICES fisheries overview at February meeting ( members) Ask ICES to add a column in the catch advice table that shows a comparison with the ICES advice from the previous year (Carmen Fernandez) Draft recommendations for blue whiting, Atlanto-Scandian herring and North Sea horse mackerel to be approved by the Executive Committee (chairman) Identify sources of discards of North Sea horse mackerel and suggest fleet-specific solutions before 2019 ( members) Continue work of the blue whiting focus group and develop a management strategy that can better deal with a stock like blue whiting (focus group members) Page 9 of 9