Report | February 9, 2016
Where do European Vessels Fish?
European vessels have been fishing in the world’s oceans ever since the first pioneering English, French, Spanish and Portuguese fishermen crossed the Atlantic to find cod off the Canadian coast in the early sixteenth century. It is estimated that 28% of the fish caught by EU vessels for human consumption originates from waters outside the EU.
European flagged vessels have operated in foreign waters under a myriad of agreements ever since the formation of the EU. Every European flagged vessel aiming to fish outside European waters, as well as foreign vessels hoping to fish in European waters, must obtain a Fishing Authorisation under the Fisheries Authorisation Regulation (FAR).
Transparency and public information
Through an access to information request to the European Commission, Oceana and its NGO colleagues were able to publish, for the first time, how many vessels were authorised to fish outside the EU between 2010 and 2014. The vessels are named and shown where and when they were authorised to fish.
Data reveals more than 15,000 EU vessels fi shing outside EU waters
The EU lends its flag to a large fleet of fi shing vessels that operate outside EU waters. Until recently, the only publicly available figure on the number of EU vessels operating outside the EU was from an external study in 2008 that identified 718 vessels for the year 2007iii.
However, the information obtained by Oceana showed that between 2010 and 2014, 15,264 fishing vessels have operated under EU flags in external waters and that all these vessels were authorised under the EU’s FAR. ‘The data provided by the European Commission also includes some authorisations from 2006 to 2020 – amounting to 16,336 unique vessels – including 978 authorisations that were given to third (or non-EU) countries to operate in EU waters. This makes an average of 3,052 vessels per year – 2,334 more than the only other previously available figure.
This analysis indicates that the external fleet could be significantly larger than official EU sources suggest and therefore the amount of fish caught by this fleet and consumed in the EU would also be much larger than previously estimated.
