News / Councillors call on SIC to intervene over cod quota cuts
Mackerel reductions also strongly criticised by local industry
SHETLAND Islands Council will be urged to urgently ask the UK Government to keep northern shelf cod quotas at their 2025 levels at a meeting next week.
North Isles councillor Duncan Anderson is leading a notice of motion at the council chamber on Monday, which will ask the SIC to make an urgent representation to the secretary of state Angela Eagle about the quotas.
It comes after International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) last week advised a zero catch North Sea cod quota for 2026.
ICES said everything but accidental bycatch should be stopped in order to ensure the safety of the species, blaming uncertainties in the stock for the decision.
But Shetland Fishermen’s Association (SFA) has poured scorn on the ICES science, calling the announcement “outrageous” and “fleet-ending madness”.
The SFA has instead called on northern shelf cod quotas to remain at their 2025 levels.
Anderson and fellow North Isles councillors Robert and Ryan Thomson have called on the SIC to request that the UK Government consider the SFA’s alternative proposal.
The motion, set to go before the full council on Monday 6 October, will urge the council to make “urgent representation” to Eagle and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to formally register its concern.
“ICES themselves admit considerable uncertainty around the data being used to justify this new position which has the potential to cause great economic and social damage to areas like Shetland, for which fishing is a major part of our economy and heritage,” Anderson said.
“We respectfully request that the government consider the alternative proposal put forward by the Shetland Fishermen’s Association, thereby providing stability to the industry until more robust data can be obtained.”
SFA chairman James Anderson, who is also skipper of the whitefish vessel Alison Kay, said last week that governments could not expect boats “surrounded by cod” to tie up for a year and still be in business at the end of it.
“Fishing crews in Shetland do not believe that further quota reductions would do anything to encourage growth in the cod stock,” he said..“So we are proposing a series of measures which will more successfully balance stock sustainability and economic stability – until the various scientific uncertainties around cod are better resolved.”
The Shetland proposal includes extended spawning ground closures across the North Sea to protect juvenile cod and voluntary 30 per cent total allowable catch reductions for haddock and whiting.
They have also offered to double the scientific quota available for cod studies through “industry contribution”.
The SFA said this would “help resolve the scientific uncertainties which plague the Northern Shelf cod stock assessment”.
The association has warned that drastic cuts would “devastate North Sea fishing communities, particularly in Scotland”.
Meanwhile the local fishing industry has also strongly condemned a recommendation of a 70 per cent reduction in total allowable catch of mackerel next year.
Scottish Pelagic Fishermen’s Association (SPFA) chairman Richard Williamson, who is the second skipper of the Research LK62, said he did not disagree that mackerel stocks were not as high as they were a decade ago.
However he said they were now in better shape than they were two years ago.“Fishermen are custodians of the sea,” he said.
“We have no interest whatsoever in demanding excessive quotas that would end up crippling our businesses and the communities that depend on them.”
SFA executive officer Simon Collins said the mackerel advice was based on “reckless guesswork and fag-packet choices”.
“This is not how any scientific institution should conduct itself,” he added.
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