Several scientific institutions from Spain, Norway and Portugal are collaborating on a project to develop a multi-specific model for the assessment of fish stocks of the fishery ground on the Flemish Cap in the North Atlantic.
It is hoped that this initiative will also promote a more sustainable and efficient management of the fisheries of the waters of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO).
Researchers from the Institute of Marine Research (IIM) of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), under the Vigo Oceanographic Centre of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), of the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen (IMR) from Norway, and the Portuguese Institute of the Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (IPMA) are involved in the project.
This initiative, funded by the Marie Curie programme of the European Union (EU) and entitled ‘Implementing a Gadget multi-specific model to the ecosystem of Flemish Cap and incorporation into the fisheries management in NAFO: a case study,” is led by Alfonso Pérez Rodríguez, IIM-CSIC researcher.
According to the scientist, “the traditional approach to fisheries management considered species were independent one from the other, and thus they were managed.”
This approach began to be questioned in the 80s, when a wider one was becoming stronger, “since it considered all the species having commercial interest together, especially those that interact with each other by predation relationships or by other types of relationships such as competition for food,” explained Pérez Rodríguez.
However, he clarified that “the complexity that causality represents in the dynamics of the marine populations and the data and biological information scarcity contributed for this multi-specific approach to fisheries management not to have been developed and widely implemented around the world despite being globally accepted by scientists as the most appropriate one.”
It is anticipated that GADCAP project takes place over the next two years at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen.
Pérez Rodríguez stated that for three months a year he will collaborate with researchers in these centres “to give this mathematical model greater consistency and applicability.” The goal is that it can be used by the NAFO Scientific Council to assess “the state of cod, redfish and shrimp stocks in Flemish Cap, and to propose joint management measures for the three species.”
The ultimate goal is for the stocks to achieve long-term higher stability and for fishery resources to gain sustainability.
The Spanish fishing fleet (mainly from Galicia) and the Portuguese one are those to obtain more benefits as a result of this resource sustainability in waters managed by NAFO because along with the Faroe Islands and Russia they are the ones that have traditionally “received increased quotas for fishing for cod, redfish and black halibut,” the researcher explained.
In this regard, he stressed that about 8 per cent of the catch of the fleet from Spain in international waters comes from NAFO waters.
The stability of these stocks, therefore, would increase the importance of these fisheries for the Spanish fleet. But “to this end it will be necessary to have tools like the multi-specific model to be developed with GADCAP project,” he concluded.
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