Negotiate sustainable catch limits for all 5 UK cod stocks with the EU in 2022.

There are five cod stocks around the UK, all of which are overfished. Four are so badly overfished that populations are at risk of collapse. Every year, catch limits are determined in negotiations between the UK, EU and Norway and every year the UK ignores the science and allows overfishing.

We need thriving cod populations around the UK for the health of our seas, our people and our businesses that depend on cod. However, the situation is dire. The West Scotland cod population alone has declined by 92% since 1981. Despite continued warnings about the perilous condition of the stock, the UK set catch limits far above sustainable levels. The UK must set catch limits at sustainable levels to allow cod populations to replenish themselves and flourish in our seas, for us all.

Annual scientific advice on the fishing opportunities for fish stocks, including cod, is provided by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and is used to negotiate a total allowable catch (TAC) for most commercially important fish stocks in UK waters. Our objective in fisheries negotiations with other coastal States which fish in the North East Atlantic including the EU and Norway is to set TACs in line with this advice to make sure that stocks are exploited within sustainable limits. In a few instances we must balance the need to allow fishing in a mixed fishery to continue in order to support our fishing communities, while enabling the recovery of more vulnerable stocks which can be taken as a bycatch. In practice, this means that TAC reductions made to protect a vulnerable stock may require reductions in another healthy stock that is caught at the same time.

For example, for 2022 because of our concerns about the vulnerable condition of North Sea cod, we negotiated the total allowable catch for both North Sea haddock and North Sea whiting at levels significantly below the total catch recommended by the scientific advice (-59% and -63% respectively). This had the effect of lowering fishing effort on targeted fisheries which have a high bycatch of cod. The advice for North Sea cod in 2023 recommended a +63% increase in the total allowable catch and also forecasts a +25% increase by 2024 in the Spawning Stock Biomass for the biological stock, which is an indicator of a stock’s reproductive capacity. This suggests our approach might have contributed to the expansion of the cod biomass in the North Sea and allowed the EU, Norway and the UK to agree to increased fishing opportunities for next year. That said, this management approach can also sometimes mean we want to set a TAC for a more vulnerable stock above the headline scientific advice to avoid the TAC for that stock “choking” or preventing the catch of other stocks that are healthy and commercially important.