This is an HTML version of an attachment to the Freedom of Information request 'Access to information regarding total allowable catches (TACs) of EU fish stocks in the Northeast Atlantic discussed and adopted on 17 and 18 December 2018, and exemptions from the landing obligation'.



Ref. Ares(2018)3458435 - 29/06/2018
Ref. Ares(2019)2387732 - 04/04/2019
UK Comments on STECF Requests 
 
Exemption 
Shortfalls 
UK Comments 
Common sole (undersized 
Location of sole nursery grounds has again  This sole exemption has already been approved and is in force at 
only) caught with trawl 
not been provided.  Provision of this 
the moment. When the exemption was finalised in previous years 
gears in area VIId 
material is a condition in the Delegated 
France asked that text was added to exclude nursery grounds. From 
Act and should be supplied . 
a UK perspective we would like this nursery ground exclusion to be 
Lead: UK 
removed as we have the following concerns: 
 
  It is not easy to define nursery areas and there is no current legal 
definition of what the term means. We are concerned about the 
legal precedent any definition drafted now would set. 
 
  Data in a recent UK Cefas paper on sole nursery areas is ten years 
out of date – we don’t know how consistent this data is and how 
much matters have changed in the past ten years.  
 
  If we did want to try and determine specific nursery areas to 
exclude from this exemption, we would need to formally consult 
our industry and regional delivery bodies – and we do not have 
time to do this in the very limited time until the next STECF 
meeting.  
 
  The evidence for this exemption has already been considered and 
has already been deemed strong enough for an exemption (with 
an over 80% survival rate). Our arguments were that the discard 
rate in the affected fisheries is very low anyway and the gear is as 
selective as it can be – so the possibility of excessive mortality is 
limited. The use of this exemption will not increase mortality as 
most of the fish survive. But mortality will increase if fishermen 
are made to land all their undersized sole catch in particular 
areas. 

 
  Nursery areas are associated with concentrations of juvenile fish, 
which for sole is fish below 13cm. (The MCRS for sole is higher at 
24cm.) The vessels affected by this exemption are very unlikely to 
catch this juvenile sole because of their selectivity measures. So 
we see no reason to exclude nursery areas from this exemption. 
 
 
 
 
Skates and ray species 
Very few landings and discards data 
We have supplied all the relevant data generated and published on the 
caught by any gear in the 
provided. EWG18-06 recognises these 
STECF FDI database – which is the best data to use to ensure consistency. 
North Western Waters 
The same data could be disaggregated, but we do not think this will 
(areas VI and VII)
data are sparse and that there are quite a 
 
lot of species, however, Regional Group 
provide any more useful information. However we have attached a 
should provide whatever they do have to  spreadsheet of the raw data for reference. 
 
assist inform the evaluations. 
Alternatively all Member States would need to independently produce 
Lead: UK, NL 
data on skate and ray catches and discards by metier which would be very 
time consuming, and would probably not be consistent across Member 
States. We do not think this will be a useful exercise.