European Union, Norway and the United Kingdom - fisheries consultations: agreed records 2023

Agreed records of consultations from meetings of delegations from the United Kingdom, Norway and the European Union, held between November and December 2022 on the joint management of shared North Sea stocks.


Haddock

14.1 The Delegations noted that according to the ICES MSY approach catches in 2023 should be no more than 137,058 tonnes. This represents an increase of 6.5% in the advice compared to 2022. ICES estimates that discards and BMS landings are at 37.0% of total catch (in weight) in 2021. ICES projects a combined discards and industrial bycatch rate of 23.3% of total catch (by weight) in 2022.

14.2 The Delegations agreed that they would not pursue the full TAC increase implied by the ICES headline advice given that such a large increase could have a detrimental impact on the status of the North Sea cod stock. They therefore agreed that it would not be appropriate to follow the MSY approach.

14.3 The Delegations agreed to establish a TAC for 2023 in ICES Subarea 4 (North Sea), Subdivision 20 (Skagerrak) and Division 6.a. (West of Scotland) of 68,498 tonnes. This represents an increase of 30% compared to the TAC in 2022.

14.4 The Delegations agreed that the resulting TAC for Subarea 4 is 58,402 tonnes (85.26%), the TAC for Subdivision 20 is 3,589 tonnes (5.24%), and the TAC for Division 6.a is 6,507 tonnes (9.50%).

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