Fishery Regulations in the ICNAF Area

• Published in: Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada
• Main Authors: Bogdanov, A. S., Konstantinov, K. G.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian Science Publishing 1973
• Subjects: General Medicine; Northwest Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/f73-379; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/f73-379

Several countries have been fishing in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean for 300 years, and recently pressure on the stocks has increased greatly. The need for conservation resulted in the creation of the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF) in 1950. By 1972 16 countries were party to the Convention.When the Convention came into force, the catch in the Convention area was 1.7 million metric tons; by 1968 this had risen to 3.9 million metric tons, after which it has declined, largely because of lower cod, herring, and haddock catches.The main objective of ICNAF is to maintain the fish stocks at levels permitting maximum sustainable yields. The first regulation applied by the Commission was the fixing of minimum sizes of trawlnet meshes used to catch a number of important demersal species. At its 1972 meeting other measures were introduced, notably the fixing of maximum quotas for several subareas and for the more important species. ICNAF is therefore the international commission which has the most thorough and extensive regulation measures.At meetings in 1971 and 1972 the Commission concluded that exploitation of the major species in the ICNAF area was extremely high and that it was necessary to reduce fishing effort. These conclusions were arrived at on the basis of intensive research. Ten years of research on cod stocks is described as an example of this kind of work. It led to the conclusion that mesh size limitations were not sufficient to maintain the stocks of cod, and this was one of the strong reasons for adoption of the quotas, a step which is of great significance in international fisheries management.