Some Recent Work on Fish and Fisheries Rainer Froese GEOMAR, Kiel, Taking Stock: Journalism Conference on European Fisheries Issues 25 October 2012, Lübeck

‚Stability‘ in world catches masks decline of fish stocks 2

Global Catches are Stagnating Pauly and Froese, 2012

Global Effort Keeps Increasing Pauly and Froese, 2012

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

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 6

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

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

MSY Is Good For You 10

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 11 If Stock Size is

European Stocks and Fisheries 12

Status of all European Stocks 13 Neue Bestände Zusammengebrochen Developing Fully exploited Undeveloped Overexploited Collapsed Froese et al. Marine Biology 2012

Status of European Fish Stocks 14 Landings from ICES 2010, MSY from Froese and Proelß 2010

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% 15

Harvest Control Rule Schema 16

European Fisheries 17

Politics

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

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 recently decided upon its ‚compromise‘ position The European Parlament will present its position in in the next months, then a new compromise has to be negotiated 20

The Council Compromise Postpones sustainable fishing for stocks without F msy estimates 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 21

The General Problem Over 4,000 species of fishes are harvested from the wild globally (FishBase 02/2012) Full stock assessments are available for only a few hundred species

The Solution General principles combined with incomplete knowledge are sufficient for reasonable management (Lessons learned after 30+ years of managing the Great Barrier Reef, Josh Gibson, pers. comm., )

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

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

Growth, Mortality and Reproduction Froese & Pauly, in press

Let them Grow and Multiply 27

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

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.

Seafood Labels to the Rescue

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

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

Thank You All paper PDFs are available from Rainer Froese GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany