Russian ecologists ask to limit the halibut fishery and revise the procedure for calculating its total allowable catch

Published 2021년 7월 2일

Tridge summary

Environmental organization WWF Russia has called for emergency restrictions on halibut fishing and a revision of the total allowable catch (TAC) calculation method, citing a significant drop in halibut numbers in the Far East's fishing regions. The organization argues that the current TAC estimation, based on ship reports, leads to an overestimation and ignores factors like killer whale predation and by-catch of immature fish. Despite these concerns, the Federal Agency for Fishery plans to maintain the current fishing model and has set the 2021 halibut TAC at 13.7 thousand tons, with an expected decrease to 25-30% in 2022.

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Original content

The drop in halibut stocks in the Far East by three to four times in recent years has caused concern among environmentalists. WWF Russia turned to the head of the Federal Agency for Fishery Ilya Shestakov with a request to introduce temporary restrictions on the extraction of the resource and to revise the procedure for calculating the total allowable catch (TAC) for halibut. Fishermen believe that the proposals can stabilize the state of stocks, but the regulator is not going to change the current model for calculating catches and drastically restrict fishing. WWF-Russia Director Dmitry Gorshkov appealed to the head of the Federal Agency for Fishery Ilya Shestakov with a request to introduce a temporary ban on fishing for halibut off the coast of Kamchatka and in the north of the Sea of Okhotsk. The reason was the "critical decline" in halibut stocks in the fishing areas of the Far Eastern basin, which only in 2019-2020 decreased three to four times. According to Mr. Gorshkov, ...

Source: Fishnet.ru