Sean O’Donoghue, CEO of Killybegs Fishermen’s Association has claimed that his group will not be pleased with any decision reached by the international negotiations on the 2019 Mackerel Quotas.
According to the Irish Examiner, O’Donoghue said that “Whatever the outcome, I can tell you now we won’t be happy with it because of the questionable scientific advice”.
“We have already had two flawed pieces of advice on mackerel stocks last year from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, one with a human inputting error and one with a modeling problem, one positive and one negative.”
2019 Mackerel Quotas
His comments come after the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed, announced yesterday that the council of eleven EU and non-EU countries were advised to reduce its mackerel catch quota by 61%.
The scientific community immediately expressed concerns regarding the quality of that advice, but the Minister said that they need to take full account of all of the available information.
“These negotiations will be very difficult. The proposed 61% cut in the Mackerel Quota for 2019 would be very significant for our fishing industry along the western seaboard, particularly in Donegal, Galway, Kerry & Cork,” the Minister said, speaking at the negotiations in Cork.
“Ireland is committed to the long-term sustainability of this stock and has worked hard, to date to get a more graduated response to the scientific advice, taking account of the fact that this will be subject to a full review and quality assurance early in early 2019”.
Mackerel is Ireland’s single most important fishery economically, according to the Minister, as well as being of great importance to the EU.
Mackerel is concentrated in the waters of the North Eastern Atlantic and is a highly migratory stock which necessitates negotiations between relevant parties (‘Coastal States’) on how best to manage a shared resource in a sustainable manner.
© 2018 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition.
