FAO visserij commissie bespreekt EU-plannen voor behoud van haaien en zeevogels (en)

After two years the Committee on Fisheries of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will meet in Rome in the first week of March.

On the agenda of its meeting is a series of topics relevant to fishing, including ways of securing sustainable shark catches, protection of sea birds, liberalisation of the market for fish products, aquaculture, deep sea fishing control, support of young fishermen and fight against illegal fishing. The Committee will certainly also touch upon the debate of the FAO reform, which is currently taking place in all forums of this organisation.

Particularly in the past decade the FAO has, as a specialised OSN agency, contributed to the expansion of international agreements or action plans for securing responsible control and conservation of populations of fish, sea mammals and other sea animals. FAO provides guidelines to national and regional fishing organisations on how to include these agreements in their regulations. The Committee on Fisheries (www.fao.org/fishery/en) will not only prepare and discuss new plans but it will also examine how states and organisations progress with the realisation of the current plans. For instance, it will monitor the realisation of two action plans in the EU - regarding sharks and sea birds.

Because all decisions are based on credible data, the action plan is intended to focus on collection of data on fishing, the occurrence of individual shark species and their role in the ecosystem. “The objective is to implement stricter rules for direct shark catches and by-catches, adopt stricter inspection rules and push further the existing ban on the brutal practice when only shark fins are cut off for a famous culinary specialty and the sharks are thrown back into the sea”, explains Minister Gandalovic. “This ban was adopted for most international waters but the standards for its enforcement differ and they are burdened with many exceptions and varying interpretations of regulations.”

The action plan to improve the protection of sharks within as well as outsider of the territorial waters of the EU Member States was published by the Commission in February this year and the Presidency wishes to move this text forward in a significant way. “The Presidency wants to do as much as possible to speed up the debates on the Sharks Action Plan”, stated Minister Gandalovic. “We will submit the text for discussion to the Agriculture and Fisheries Ministers in April. Our ambition is to adopt the Council conclusions as well”.

FAOs International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks was adopted in 1999 (www.fao.org/fishery/ipoa-sharks). For more information go to the website of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic (*1) or the European Commission (*2).

The second international action plan of the FAO for reducing incidental catch of seabirds (www.fao.org/docrep) dates from 1998. It represents an instrument for countries that want to help protect seabirds. By the end of 2009, the European Commission, in addition to measures already adopted, wants to present an EU action plan, which will reinforce existing measures and introduce new ones.

In both cases the EU and its Member States are taking action to make sure that the measures to protect sharks and seabirds are adopted and respected also within regional fisheries organisations that are in charge of fishing in a large part of the world’s seas and oceans. Following their geographic location, members of these organisations include the EU and its Member States, but usually also the world’s major players such as the United States, Canada, Norway, Japan and of course China, which is the largest fish producer in the world. For example, at the end of March there will be a meeting of the regional fisheries organisation for the Mediterranean in Tunisia (GFCM *3) which will discuss specific, and in many cases binding instruments to implement the recommendations of FAO.

*1 www.mze.cz

*2 ec.europa.eu/fisheries/press_corner

*3 General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean

Contact: Tereza M. Dvorácková, Spokesperson of the Czech Ministry of Agriculture for the Czech EU Presidency tel.: +420 221 813 063, mobile: +420 737 213 030; e-mail: tereza.dvorackova@mze.cz