EU governments rapped for not protecting deep-sea fish

EU countries are not doing enough to save Europe's deep-water fish, exotic but threatened species that are fast becoming an alternative to overcaught mainstays such as cod and hake, the EU executive said yesterday.

Europe's deep-sea fish, such as the orange roughy, black scabbardfish, forkbeard, blue ling and roundnose grenadier, grow and reproduce far more slowly than fish in shallower waters and are more vulnerable to overfishing.

As numbers of EU commercial stocks such as cod, sole and hake started to fall in the early 1990s, the deep-water fish became an attractive catch as trawlers switched from traditional fishing grounds. Some deep-water fish live for up to 150 years. Last November, EU ministers thrashed out a deal setting quotas and permitted days at sea for vessels catching these species for 2007 and 2008. Quota cuts ranged between 10 and 25 per cent below the quotas allocated to EU countries in 2005.

Those reductions were partly based on similar cuts agreed for the previous 2005-06 period. But according to a recent European Commission report, it was impossible to assess the effects of the 2005-06 quota cuts since EU countries had failed to submit proper reports or carry out adequate controls on illegal fishing and volumes of fish caught.

"Concerns have... been raised about the effectiveness of the inspection and surveillance of the designated ports for the landing of deep-sea species on which member states have to communicate their inspection and surveillance procedures to the Commission," it said in a statement.

"Not surprisingly, the Commission concludes that the implementation of the measures has been too poor to adequately protect deep-sea stocks."

The EU has strict rules to control deep-water fishing. Special permits are needed for vessels to land or trans ship more than a certain amount of fish, which may only be delivered to specified ports. But enforcement has historically been patchy.