November 25, 2024 — Mackerel and herring in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, near Europe, have been dramatically overfished for many years, endangering the stocks and creating potential knock-on effects for marine mammals and seabirds that eat them. Members of the multilateral body that manages fishing in the region’s international waters did little to remedy the situation when they met this month.

The North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), whose members are the European Union, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Russia and the United Kingdom, held its annual meeting in London Nov. 12-15. The body took small steps toward developing an ecosystem-based fisheries management approach and deciding which marine zones to designate as protected in the international “30×30” system.

More notably, the parties continued to leave unaddressed the fundamental governance issues that critics say result in mismanagement of Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) and Atlanto-Scandian herring (Clupea harengus): a lack of transparency and a governance structure that “neuters” NEAFC and allows key management decisions to be made by member states unilaterally or in opaque side meetings.

Disagreements between the parties also bubbled over at the meeting, with the European Union publicly accusing Russian vessels of fishing illegally in NEAFC’s regulatory area, and the other parties of failing to hold Russia to account for it in a statement issued Nov. 21.

“This is the most fraught and most problematic RFMO, to my knowledge,” Ryan Orgera, global director of Accountability.Fish, a Virginia-based advocacy group, told Mongabay just after the meeting, which he attended. “I’ve never seen any systematic, structural issues that are this dysfunctional.”

Read the full article at Mongabay