The EU could increase the amount of fish landings from the North-Eastern Atlantic and the North Sea by 56%, up to more than 5 million tonnes, if tomorrow’s Council of Ministers approves catch limits in line with scientific advice. A study by Oceana found that the recovery would take less than ten years, and that … Read more
After negotiations late into Monday evening, agriculture and fisheries ministers came to a disappointing deal on “fishing opportunities” in the European Atlantic waters for the next two years. The agreement affects deep-sea fish and sharks, and goes against recommended conservation measures for this vulnerable marine life and sustainable fishing in the Atlantic, Oceana warns. The … Read more
MEPs have today introduced changes that significantly weaken a plan to better manage fisheries in the European waters of the Atlantic Ocean. After a vote in the European Parliament, the Fisheries Committee voted to take a step backwards on sustainably managing the fishing grounds for 8 major EU fishing countries and overlooked legal obligations under the … Read more
In November 2018 EU fisheries ministers will decide on fishing limits for 2019 and 2020 for certain deepsea fish stocks. This will be the final November Council meeting where fisheries ministers have the opportunity to end overfishing of deep-sea species by 2020, as is legally required by the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP)1 . The vulnerable … Read more
Today, 15 marine conservation non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Spain and Portugal met in Lisbon – in Ecologistas en Acción’s sailboat Diosa Maat and on Liga para a Protecção da Natureza’s headquarters – for the first time, to coordinate their work on key marine conservation issues. The Iberian sardine stock, the deep sea fishing opportunities and … Read more
Species living at these depths have adapted to a cold, dark environment, with few nutrients. As a consequence, they are characterised by slow growth rates, late sexual maturity, few offspring and long lifespans. This makes them highly vulnerable to overfishing, because their capacity to recover from depletion is very limited. Deep-sea rays and sharks are … Read more
Oceana is outraged that governments have refused to expand the OSPAR list of threatened and declining species and habitats, thus further delaying the protection of declining ecosystems and species at risk of extinction in the North-East Atlantic. The Convention meeting held in Trondheim (Norway) concluded yesterday, with countries agreeing on few actions to improve either … Read more
The establishment of fishing opportunities is the most important management tool to enable European Union (EU) fisheries to keep fishing mortality rates within sustainable levels. In fact, the state of fish stocks and intensity of fish resource exploitation depends heavily on the fishing opportunities decision. Although the manner in which fisheries are managed in the … Read more
Seamounts are considered biodiversity hotspots and the Macaronesian region hosts over one hundred of them. However, biological information on these underwater elevations remains scarce. In 2014, Oceana launched an at-sea campaign aimed at identifying and describing deep-sea benthic communities that inhabit several Macaronesian slopes and remote seamounts. As a preliminary outcome, the presence of Vulnerable … Read more
Regulation (EC) 2347/2002, the ‘deep-sea access regime’, has failed to ensure the sustainable management of deep-sea fisheries and ecosystems in the North-East Atlantic Ocean. Many deep-sea species captured in the region are not covered by the regulation and therefore remain unmanaged, while only three of 24 managed species have one or more stocks considered to … Read more
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We have already protected nearly 4 million square miles of ocean and innumerable sea life - but there is still more to be done.
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