1. Oceans full of Fish? Small Steps in the Right Direction Rainer Froese GEOMAR, Kiel, rfroese@geomar.derfroese@geomar.de Webinar Alumni Portal, 26 April 2013

2. Overview Status of global fish stocks and fisheries

3. ‚Stability‘ in world catches masks decline of fish stocks 3

4. Global Catches are Stagnating Pauly and Froese, 2012

5. Global Effort Keeps Increasing Pauly and Froese, 2012

6. Global Fish Stocks are Shrinking If catches are stagnating while effort is increasing then fish stocks must be shrinking Pauly and Froese, 2012

7. The method to assess all global stocks proposed by Froese & Kesner-Reyes (2002), subsequently used by others, including Worm et al. (2006) for their 2048 prediction, is sound Global overfishing continues FAO, by using a subset of well-researched stocks, severely underestimates global overfishing 7

8. Status of Global Fish Stocks 2009 8 Neue Bestände Zusammengebrochen Undeveloped Developing Fully exploited Overexploited Collapsed Froese et al. Marine Biology 2012

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10. Fisheries Can Provide More Protein Immediately Carnivore Aquaculture is a Protein Sink

11. Four Terms Biomass (B) is the body-weight of all fish in the water MSY is the Maximum Sustainable Yield (= maximum catch) that can be taken from a population of fish (= stock) indefinitely B msy is the biomass that a fish stock must have, so that it can deliver the maximum sustainable yield MSY F msy is the fishing rate (the proportion of fish killed by fishing) resulting in B msy

12. MSY Is Good For You 12

13. Below MSY Level Stressed ecosystems Small fish Small stock size High fluctuations Low, uncertain catch High effort /cost Low / no profit Low impact impossible MPAs problematic Subsidies necessary Above MSY Level Healthy ecosystems Large fish Large stock sizes Low fluctuations High, certain catch Low effort /cost High profit Low impact possible MPAs unproblematic Subsidies not necessary 13 If Stock Size is

14. European Stocks and Fisheries 14

15. Status of all European Stocks 15 Neue Bestände Zusammengebrochen Developing Fully exploited Undeveloped Overexploited Collapsed Froese et al. Marine Biology 2012

16. Status of European Fish Stocks 16 Landings from ICES 2010, MSY from Froese and Proelß 2010

17. Generic Harvest Control Rules for European Fisheries Rainer Froese, Trevor A. Branch, Alexander Proelß, Martin Quaas, Keith Sainsbury & Christopher Zimmermann (2011) Rules for sustainable and profitable fisheries based on 1) economic optimization of fisheries 2) honoring international agreements 3) true implementation of the precautionary principle 4) learning from international experiences 5) ecosystem-approach to fisheries management 6) recognizing the biology of European fish stocks If these rules were applied, catches could increase by 63% 17

18. Harvest Control Rule Schema 18

19. European Fisheries 19

20. Politics

21. News from Rio +20 Article 168 of the The Future We Want: Outcome of the Conference deals with fisheries: Governments commit to intensify efforts to restore stocks at least to MSY levels They commit to urgent measures, „including by reducing or suspending fishing...“ They commit to ecosystem-based fisheries management

22. News from the CFP Reform The Commission (Maria Damanaki) has presented a reasonable CFP reform proposal (although less than Rio +20) The Council of Agriculture Ministers has decided upon its ‚compromise‘ position The European Parlament has agreed on an ambitious reform proposal Now a compromise has to be negotiated 22

23. The Council Compromise Postpones sustainable fishing until 2020 Proposes an administrative monster for reduction of discards until 2020 Introduces lots of loopholes for continued overfishing, e.g. of not „significant“ species in mixed fisheries 23

24. The Fisheries Question How much can we safely take from a fish population? How much mortality can we add without destroying the stock?

25. The Answer Principles of Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management Never take more than all other predators combined (typically 20% of stock) To avoid collapse with high certainty, take less Catch fish at the optimum size

26. Growth, Mortality and Reproduction Froese & Pauly, 2013

27. Let them Grow and Multiply 27

28. How about Data-Poor Stocks? Knowing the fraction of the stock that can be fished is fine, but what about the many stocks for which no abundance is known? New method (Martell & Froese 2012) estimates the maximum sustainable yield from catch data and resilience

30. Excellent Agreement Plot of MSY estimated by the Catch-MSY method versus full stock assessments for 48 stocks from the Northeast Atlantic. The broken line indicates the 1:1 relation while the dotted lines indicate ratios of 0.5 and 1.5, respectively.

31. Seafood Labels to the Rescue

32. Definitions of ‚overfished‘ and ‚overfishing‘ that are compatible with international law 19% (FoS) to 31% (MSC) of certified stocks are overfished and suffer from ongoing overfishing But 61% (MSC) to 81% (FoS) of stocks with data are large enough and moderately exploited, which is better than the 15% in uncertified stocks 32

33. Just Out Mismanagement of North Sea Cod: rebuilding was possible if scientific advice had been followed (Froese & Quaas 2012) Taking Rio+20 seriously: 50 – 70% of European stocks could be rebuilt to MSY-levels by 2015 (Froese & Quaas 2013) Is the costly European fisheries management necessary? Much simpler managgement may deliver better results (in prep).

34. Questions? All paper PDFs are available from www.fishbase.de/rfroese Rainer Froese GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany rfroese@geomar.de