Sustainability notes

This is an overview of how the Germany North Sea saithe trawl fishery scored in assessment against the MSC standard. For the certifiers evaluation please download the full public certification report (LINK) with detailed information on the performance of this fishery against the criteria of the MSC environmental standard for sustainable fishing.

The fishery scored as follows in assessment against the MSC standard for sustainable fishing. The highest possible score for each principle is 100 and a fishery must score at least 80 against each principle to get certified: 

Sustainability strengths

Some points on which the fishery scored over 90 are outlined below. 

Principle 1: the state of the fish stock

• All fishery landings are comprehensively recorded for all gear types. Levels of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing are considered negligible.
• The certified vessels fish with bigger mesh sizes than required. This means that the level of fish discarded are very low as they are able to escape from the nets before capture.
• There are effective management tools in place that control the harvest from the fishery. These include limits on the number of licence holders in the fishery, quotas on the amount of fish vessels can catch, minimum landing sizes and minimum mesh sizes on nets. 

Principle 2: the impact of the fishery on the marine environment

• The role and importance of saithe in the food web is reasonably well understood.
• The physical impact of trawl gear on marine habitats is adequately understood and unlikely to have significant adverse effects in the established fishery grounds.
• There is alot of information available about the presence and populations of protected endangered and threatened species in the fishery grounds.
• An observer programme is in place to measure the level of bycatch in the fishery. The coverage of this programme is limited however and the fishery has agreed to improve this information (see Challenges below).

Principle 3: the fishery management systems

• The management system of the fishery is consistent with national law, international conventions and agreements and observes the legal and customary rights of people dependent upon fishing.  
• Procedures are in place to monitor catch and reduce harvest if needed.
• A comprehensive enforcement scheme is in place with inspections to ensure that fishers comply with management controls at sea.

Challenges

In order to ensure its continuing sustainable operation this fishery made a commitment to improving its performance where it scored between 60-80. Some of the actions the fishery has committed to are:  

• Uncertainties in stock assessment: Develop a plan to address any areas of data collection required to quantify, reduce or address uncertainties in the stock assessment or to incorporate an appropriate level of precaution in the setting of the annual Total Allowable Catch for the fishery.
• Bycatch: Improve data gathering procedures to provide adequate coverage of the certified fleet to provide robust estimates of the bycatch of all species, including estimates of discards.
• Bycatch of North Sea Cod: The level of cod bycatch in the fishery will be identified and, if required, appropriate measures to minimise cod bycatch will be implemented.