Fisheries Discards – Waste of a Resource or a Necessary Evil?

• Main Authors: Ben Diamond, Bryce D. Beukers-stewart
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.631.2710; http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/reform/docs/university_york_en.pdf

Fisheries discards are often seen as an enormous waste of resources and an impediment to the rebuilding of fish stocks. However, many traditional fisheries management measures have effectively encouraged discarding in an effort to enforce catch quotas and protect undersize fish or undesirable species. Discarding is currently a particularly contentious issue in European fisheries, prompting the European Commission to review its approach to managing discards. Of key concern is the North Sea which accounts for some of the highest discard rates in the world. It is jointly managed under two different policies (The European Common Fisheries Policy and the Norwegian Marine Resources Act). In Norwegian waters discarding is banned, whereas in EU waters discarding is widespread. To assess the ecological and economic effectiveness of the Norwegian ban on discards we examined its effect on Northeast Arctic fish stocks. These are considered to be biologically isolated from those in the North Sea, allowing for a meaningful comparison. By analysing normalised spawning stock biomass over a 20 year period we provide evidence that the Norwegian approach in the Northeast Arctic has been more successful than the joint approach in the North Sea for the sustainable management of cod (Gadus