Although the continent’s waters are notoriously overfished, a new analysis by researchers based in Kiel, Germany, suggests that Europe may soon be in breach of its legal obligations. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the European Union (EU) should “maintain or restore populations of harvested species at levels which can produce the maximum sustainable yield”1.

Fisheries biologist Rainer Froese and Alexander Proelß, an expert on public law, analysed data on all major northeast Atlantic fish stocks and found that, at current levels of fishing, 91% would not meet that target by 2015.

“Even if fishing were halted in 2010, 22% of the stocks are so depleted that they cannot be rebuilt by 2015,” they warn in the journal Fish and Fisheries2. “If current trends continue, Europe will miss the 2015 deadline by more than 30 years.”

Froese, of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, and Proelß, based at the Walther Schücking Institute of International Law, looked at data on 54 fish stocks. To determine the current status, they used the ratio of actual stock biomass to the biomass capable of producing maximum sustainable yield. The vast majority of stocks had ratios less than one, indicating that they were below the level demanded by UNCLOS.

The authors also determined the degree to which the stocks were being sustainably managed by calculating the ratio of actual fishing mortality for a given stock to the fishing mortality that would allow the stock to stabilize around a biomass giving maximum sustainable yield. A ratio of one would indicate that stocks were being sustainably fished but the authors found that only 6 of the 54 stocks met this criterion.

“The extent of it was certainly a surprise when we got down and added the numbers up,” says Froese.

Disappointingly, Froese says, the analysis of fish stocks over time shows little change in trend since the UN Convention was signed in the late 1990s or the 2002 conference in Johannesburg at which the 2015 deadline was set.

“It had very little influence. It had a bit, but close to nothing,” says Froese.