Europaudvalget 2020-21
EUU Alm.del Bilag 650
Offentligt
2417914_0001.png
The EU purse seine fleet in the Indian Ocean:
Legalising the misreporting of catches must not be the solution
to a technical problem
Background
Tropical tuna species such as yellowfin and skipjack play a critical role for the food security and
development opportunities of coastal States in the Indian Ocean. Purse seine vessels are the
dominant gear type and the majority of purse seine vessels in the Indian Ocean are flagged to
Spain and France, which have been operating in the region since the 1980s.
These fish stocks are being managed by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC). Yellowfin is
currently the most contentious item on the IOTC agenda. Its stock is in an alarming state and
was included on
the IUCN Red List of E da gered Spe ies as ear
threatened
i
9. Si e
then, the situation has only deteriorated. According to the scientific committee of the IOTC,
the stock is currently overfished, and yet, overall catch levels have not declined, with
overfishing still occurring. The Spanish and French fleet are responsible for the majority of the
industrial catches of yellowfin tuna (21% and 15% respectively). Both countries have overshot
their quotas in 2017 and 2018.
With the adoption and reduction of catch limits for yellowfin tuna in 2017, the commercial
strategies of the fishing companies have changed: vessels have redirected their efforts from
generally single species free-swimming schools (comprising older fish) to more mixed species
schools (comprising a higher number of juveniles) targeted via Fish Aggregating Devices
(FADs). This resulted in an increased number of juvenile catches of yellowfin and bigeye tunas,
which can negatively affect the status of the stocks. It also makes it more difficult for fishers to
identify the type of tuna fished given the similarity of yellowfin and bigeye species when they
are small.
The technical problem
All EU purse seine vessels are required to submit an electronic logbook to fishing authorities in
which masters of the vessels report in near real time all data regarding their fishing activities
and estimated catches. According to the current EU fisheries Control Regulation, the difference
between the catch estimated by the masters in their fishing logbook and the actual catches
reported in the landing declaration cannot exceed 10% per species. A failure to respect this
10% is an infringement and can be subject to fines. The accumulation of 18 penalty points for
the misreporting of catches can lead to the temporary suspension of a vessel
s
activity. Three
points are allocated to a serious infringement for misreporting of catch, so before such a
suspension would be triggered at least six serious infringements could be incurred ahead of
the first suspension.
Some EU scientists have commented that most tuna species captured by the purse seine fleet
are easily distinguishable, since they have characteristic physical features. The skipjack is easy
to distinguish by the horizontal stripes that run down its body. Large adult bigeye and yellowfin
are characterised by dissimilar body and fin shapes. However, distinguishing between juvenile
yellowfin and bigeye can be challenging, as these differences are less noticeable when the fish
are young.
1
Co
e ts o the assess e t of at h y spe ies i the tropi al purse sei e fishery
.
Document prepared by Jon
Ruiz,
et al
to discuss the feasibility of onboard sampling to improve catch composition estimates.
1
 EUU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 650: Henvendelse af 18/6-21 fra miljøorganisationer vedr. EU-fiskerikontrolforordning (EF) 1224/2009
2417914_0002.png
Given the big number of juveniles caught when deploying FADs, vessels of the Spanish and
French fleets have misreported their catches, a situation which puts them at risk of having
their fishing licence suspended.
2
For the fleet, the answer to overcome this problem is to
increase the margin of error allowed in the logbook when estimating catches. In fact, they
propose to introduce a 10% tolerance margin for the total catch instead of the more exact per
species, as has been required by EU law since 2009.
However, such an increase would have devastating consequences for tropical tuna stocks and
would incentivise misreporting: yellowfin tuna has several restrictions which do not apply to
bigeye, and also strong commercial interests exist to report yellowfin as bigeye tuna, since the
latter
s
market price can be double that of the former. Such an increase would undermine
reliable catch information by species, which is a fundamental base for scientists when making
stock assessments, with devastating consequences for the sustainability of these already
overfished stocks.
Lack of effective control of EU purse seine catches
The Spanish and French administrations are responsible for monitoring and controlling the
activities of their purse seine vessels and the reporting of their catches, even if the landings are
taking place in the ports of Indian Ocean costal States such as the Seychelles or Mauritius.
Following an access to document request by the organisations producing this briefing, it has
become clear that an infringement procedure by the European Commission will be opened
against France related to the lack of control of the activities of its external fishing fleet. Indeed,
France is barely controlling what its fleet declares to have brought to port in their landing
declarations and sales notes in non-EU countries, and the French government does not have
any procedure in place to verify the accuracy of those reports.
The French administration claims not to have any competence to control how landings take
place in non-EU countries. However, this is not necessarily true. Spain, by contrast, has
implemented an Inspection Protocol to control the catches of yellowfin tuna unloaded in ports
of the Indian Ocean, which included a team of Spanish inspectors based in the Seychelles,
carrying out inspections of all Spanish purse seine vessels in port, at unloading, during large
parts of the fishing season. While such inspections were only a time-limited inspection to get
an estimate on the catches brought to port and reported, the information gathered by Spanish
inspectors certified that Spanish purse seiners had been fishing above their quota (by 1,309 t)
and overfished large amounts of yellowfin tuna. In fact, much yellowfin tuna were being
reported as bigeye, incentivised by the higher market price of bigeye. We expect such
misreporting to only increase with a larger margin of tolerance.
In a video produced by the main French producer organisation of frozen tuna, Orthongel, it is
explained that to know the exact quantities landed it is necessary to wait for the sales notes
produced by the canneries or processors, where the fish is sorted and weighted by species.
3
Spanish and French administrations also believe that catches recorded in sale notes are the
most reliable source of information on total catches retained by purse seiners. Yet, to wait for
the weighing of the actual catch when tuna enters the EU market or the processing plant
entails very severe risks. It can take weeks for the tuna to get to the processing plants, and the
information from sales notes is gathered only once a year. Therefore, waiting for the sales
notes creates huge gaps of which unscrupulous operators can take advantage to hide illegal
2
3
http://www.orthongel.fr/docs/videos/Explication_Marge_of_tolerance-en.mp4
http://www.orthongel.fr/docs/videos/Explication_Marge_of_tolerance-en.mp4
 EUU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 650: Henvendelse af 18/6-21 fra miljøorganisationer vedr. EU-fiskerikontrolforordning (EF) 1224/2009
2417914_0003.png
catches. Furthermore, tuna can also be directly transported to non-EU countries after being
brought to port. Large amounts of Indian Ocean tuna catches by EU purse seiners are sent
directly to Ecuador, a country which is yellow-carded by the EU since it has
serious
deficiencies in terms of control
the a ti ity of the tu a fishi g a d pro essi g i dustries
.
4
It is shocking that total catches of overfished stocks are only confirmed once sales notes are
available. The information in the fishing logbook is after all the only real time catch
information that authorities have. It is from this information that quota uptake is being
monitored, to make sure that catches do not exceed the quota allocated to each vessel.
Reliable estimates in fishing logbooks are the only way to prevent overfishing of a species
which is already under stress. But if the margin of tolerance was increased and EU Member
States authorities do not ensure the proper validation of catch data in logbooks, then fishing
companies would be responsible for the control of their own quota uptake, leaving a State
prerogative (fisheries control) completely in the hands of private actors (fishing companies).
Certainly, this cannot and should not be the case where those controlled are the ones
controlling themselves
–
a system that would leave open a wide space for irregular practices.
Allowing such an increase in the margin of tolerance would also introduce further loopholes to
the system,
legalising underreporting and erasing almost 40 years of progress brought
about by successive EU Directives and Regulations, by taking EU standards on catch
reporting and control and on fighting unreported fishing back to the year 1983! At the
same time, fisheries technology on-board vessels as well as equipment allowing the
precise estimation of quantities and catch composition have significantly improved in
recent years.
The solutions
It is undeniable that additional effort and investments are required to have robust catch
estimates when catches contain many juveniles. However, allowing the misreporting of
catches can under no circumstance be the solution. Instead, fishers and governments should
focus on adopting appropriate control systems and improving the IOTC management
framework to manage tropical tuna stocks sustainably in the long term.
We therefore recommend to:
1) Incentivise the targeting of free schools fishing.
Moving away from FADs and multi-species
fishing and transitioning to a fishing method on free-swimming schools of one species would
considerably reduce the number of juveniles caught by EU purse seiners. Free-school fishing
would imply catching mostly yellowfin tunas, or mostly skipjack (with some large yellowfin
usually below them), thus making correct accounting for exact quantities caught easy. By
fishing in such a manner, catching mostly large specimens, the identification of the tuna
species caught would be easier and there would be less problems to comply with the 10%
margin of tolerance obligation.
2) Invest in on-board sampling.
It has been confirmed by scientific analysis that properly
estimating tuna catches and the species composition with a 10% margin of error is difficult to
comply without significant financial investments by the fishing sector when using FADs and
catching more than 5,000 individuals at once. Some RFMOs are however managing to do it
4
DG MARE.
Questio s a d A s ers –
Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing and issues at stake in
E uador
 EUU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 650: Henvendelse af 18/6-21 fra miljøorganisationer vedr. EU-fiskerikontrolforordning (EF) 1224/2009
successfully, as it is the case in the WCPFC.
In purse seiners deploying FADs, the brail can be monitored and measured by putting it into a
porta le pool ith ru i g sea ater
and do 5 dipnet (a smaller net to scoop out random
samples) and return the rest of the fish to the hopper (a platform on the deck used for
sorting). Another option would be to
ra do ly gra a se o d ru of the o eyor
belt
every 30 minutes of conveyer run time. This would however require two scientific observers
on-board: one on the bottom of the conveyor belt to measure the catch and one on the top
deck to measure the amounts of other fish, sharks, dolphins, turtles and rays dumped to make
sure there is no high grading. This would increase the operating costs of the fishing vessels but
would make it feasible to comply with the current rules.
On-board sampling is easier when not using FADs and fishing for mono-specific or small sets of
individuals.
3) Improve control at landing
and e.g. require an inspector from the flag State to be present at
landing to ensure that weighing is conducted properly.