Mackerel fishermen slam catch advice
Fishing leaders have reacted angrily to new catch advice calling for a 70 per cent reduction in the total allowable catch for mackerel.
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (Ices) has advised called for the measure to be introduced for 2026.
Richard Williamson, the Shetland-based second skipper of the LK62 Research and chairman of the SPFA, said the new advice bore no resemblance to what he and other fishermen were seeing right across the mackerel fishing grounds in the Northeast Atlantic.
“We don’t disagree that the stock is not as high as it was back in 2015/16, for example, but we believe that the stock is in better shape than it was two years ago.
“We wouldn’t disagree either that a comprehensive, long-term sharing arrangement binding all players in the international mackerel fishery, based largely on zonal attachment combined with a long-term management plan for this important stock, is long overdue.
“Fishermen are custodians of the sea. We have no interest whatsoever in demanding excessive quotas that would end up crippling our businesses and the communities that depend on them. That is why we have objected to ICES advice in the past when we felt it was too high, as we did when the Ices advice for North Sea herring was increased by 32 per cent in 2024, for example.”
Simon Collins of the Shetland Fishermen’s Association said the pelagic fishing fleet had itself become a major and credible contributor to hard scientific data in recent years.
He said: “We believe in scientific guidance on catch limits when it is backed with real data and a rigorous scientific process. We utterly reject this new approach by Ices, in which reckless guesswork and fag-packet choices in analysing serious data result in recommendations that threaten a critical part of the UK’s fishing fleet and all the onshore businesses that depend on it. This is not how any scientific institution should conduct itself.”