The Scottish Pelagic Sustainability Group has criticised the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) for downgrading its rating for north-east Atlantic Mackerel in its ‘Good Fish Guide’.
Ian Gatt, chairman of the Scottish Pelagic Sustainability Group, said: “The Marine Conservation Society has a reputation for ‘headline grabbing’ when it comes to its annual fish guide and this is certainly the case with their latest guidance on north-east Atlantic mackerel. Last year it was brown crab they focused on and the year before it was anglerfish, and it was perhaps inevitable they would turn their focus onto mackerel next.
“We do accept there is currently overfishing happening because of other coastal states fishing their own unilaterally set quotas outside international agreement, but the fact is the UK has kept its original mackerel share and not increased it, and has been working hard to mitigate fishing pressure, including through recent agreements with Norway and the Faroes. MCS have failed to recognise this by downgrading their assessment score for mackerel.
“MCS have only considered fishing pressure and not the actual state of the stock, with north-east Atlantic mackerel currently above the maximum sustainable yield reference point for sustainable fishing. In other words, the stock size is relatively healthy.
“Furthermore, both Irish Sea herring and north-east Atlantic mackerel stocks are currently undergoing a major assessment revision by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, and it would have been much more prudent for MCS to have waited for this work to be published rather than making their own rash and ill-informed assessments. We told MCS that this would be the sensible course to adopt for both stocks, which bizarrely they have accepted for Irish Sea herring by not downgrading it, but have not done the same for mackerel – which underlines this is more to do with generating headlines than for any other reason.”