European hake

Northern hake is not overfished and not subject to overfishing.The most recent stock assessment was published by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in 2022, using data up to 2022. It defines reference points for fishing pressure (F) and biomass (B). For fishing pressure, there is a target to keep F at or below Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY). For biomass, there is no target. However, there is a trigger point (MSY BTrigger). Below this level, F should be reduced to allow the stock to increase. Because BMSY is not defined, the Good Fish Guide applies its own definition of 1.4 x MSY BTrigger. The stock assessment was benchmarked in 2022, and the new estimates of stock size are 71% larger over time. Estimates of spawning stock biomass (SSB) now only include females, whereas previously they included males as well.The spawning-stock biomass (SSB) has increased substantially from being outside biologically safe levels in 2006 (around 45,000 tonnes) to peak at almost 300,000t in 2015. It has since declined to 186,358t in 2022. This is well above MSY Btrigger (78,405t). The stock is therefore not in an overfished state.Fishing mortality (F) decreased significantly between 2005 and 2012, and has been fluctuating below levels associated with Maximum Sustainable Yield (FMSY, 0.24) since then. In 2021 it was 0.184 - below FMSY. The stock is therefore not subject to overfishing.ICES advises that when the MSY approach is applied, catches in 2023 should be no more than 83,130 tonnes. This is an 11% increase on the previous year's advice, because of revised new stock assessment.There is some uncertainty in this stock assessment. The biomass surveys don't cover the entire stock distribution area, and changes in distribution are known to increase uncertainty in the assessment. Analyses show that the new assessment tends to revise historical SSB downwards and F upwards when a new year’s data is added. If this pattern continues, this may result in an inflated advised catch.

Emergency management of this stock in 2001 has recovered it to very good levels. Ongoing management measures appear to be controlling the fishery, but discarding can be an issue in some areas and catch limits do not cover all of the countries accessing the stock.Northern hake is a shared stock between the UK, EU, and Norway. There is no joint management plan, although one is being considered. The main management measure is to set catch limits (Total Allowable Catches, TACs).ICES recommends catch limits for the northern hake stock as a whole. However, TACs apply only to the UK and EU member states and waters, so there is potential for overfishing if other states are accessing the stock (e.g. Norway). The agreed TACs were set just below the scientific advice between 2016 and 2019, and in 2021. However, in 2020 and 2022, the TACs exceeded the advice by 8% and 5% respectively. In both cases, ICES had recommended a greater than 20% decrease in catch, but hake TACs can't change by more than 20% in one year, so TACs remained above the advice.Between 2017 and 2021, actual catches averaged 88,684 tonnes, which equates to 76% of the advice (117,801t). This could be an indication that the stock biomass has been overestimated. Caution is needed because hake are fast growing with a high natural mortality rate, so if the biomass starts to decline it could drop rapidly. A Harvest Control Rule would help to mitigate this, as it would reduce exploitation rates when certain biological reference points are approached.Overall, currently, catch limits appear to be set in line with scientific advice and actual catches are within these limits.Other measures include:Minimum conservation reference size: hake can legally be caught and sold at 27cm (30cm in Skagerrak and Kattegat). Below this size, hake have to be landed but can't be sold for human consumption and so have a lower value. Hake mature at around 35-45cm, so this doesn't prevent juveniles from being caught.Landing obligation: it is illegal to discard unwanted (e.g. below-minimum-size, BMS) hake at sea. Overall, around 6% of the catch has been discarded in the last three years, and discarding rates have decreased since 2015. However, discarding of juvenile hake (both above and below MCRS) can be substantial in some areas and fleets, particularly gillnetting. Recently, discarding of large individuals increased because of quota restrictions in certain fleets. Continued monitoring is required.An Emergency Plan was brought in in 2001 to recover the stock, involving a TAC reduction and minimum mesh size of 100mm (depending on vessel size, location and proportion of hake in the total catch). It included targets for increasing stock size and reducing fishing mortality, and limited changes in TAC from year to year. The stock is now in a very good state, and fishing pressure is at sustainable levels, although this has been strongly influenced by good spawning years in 2008 and 2012.Both the EU and UK have various fishery management measures in place. In the EU, compliance with regulations has been variable, and there are ongoing challenges with implementing some of them. The Landing Obligation (LO), an EU law that the UK has kept after Brexit, requires all quota fish to be landed, even if they are unwanted (over-quota or below minimum size). It aims to promote more selective fishing methods, reduce bycatch, and improve recording of everything that is caught, not just what is wanted. Compliance with the LO is generally poor and actual levels of discards are difficult to quantify using the current fisheries observer programme. UK administrations are in the process of replacing the landing obligation with country-specific Catching Policies.In the UK, it is too early to tell how effective management is, as the Fisheries Act only came into force in January 2021. The Act requires the development of Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs) (replacing EU Multi-Annual Plans). FMPs are currently in development, but the scope of them remains unclear. They have the potential to be very important tools for managing UK fisheries, although data limitations may delay them for some stocks. MCS is keen to see publicly available FMPs for all commercially exploited stocks, especially where stocks are depleted, that include:Targets for fishing pressure and biomass, and additional management when those targets are not being met, based on the best available scientific evidenceTimeframes for stock recoveryImproved data collection, transparency and accountability, supported by technologies such as Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM)Consideration of wider environmental impacts of the fishery

Some hake catches are by otter trawls, which are likely to cause some damage to the seabed. Bycatch is moderate and may include vulnerable species such as North Sea cod and blue and flapper skate.Hake catches are fairly evenly split between longlines, gillnets, and bottom trawls, each accounting for around 30% of the catch.Demersal otter trawls have the potential to take relatively high quantities of bycatch. In the Northeast Atlantic there are reported catches of demersal elasmobranchs and endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species (e.g. sharks, rays and marine mammals). Bycatch data is limited in many UK and EU fisheries as they are generally not well monitored. However, a proportion of the hake trawl fishery is certified and records bycatch. MCS assumes these records would also represent bycatch concerns in the uncertified components. Bycatch in the certified fishery includes the vulnerable North Sea cod, which is below safe reproductive levels. Endangered, threatened or protected species included the Critically Endangered common skate complex (blue skate and flapper skate), porbeagle, and other skates and rays.Some mitigation measures are in place in some areas. There is a UK North Sea cod avoidance plan, requiring vessels in some areas to take extra measures to reduce cod bycatch. In Sweden, vessels have increased bycatch avoidance measures by using larger-meshed panels in their nets, which allow juvenile cod to escape. For blue and flapper skate, mitigation measures include a prohibition on landing either species, and some protection for nursery areas. It is not clear if this fishery is having an impact at population level for any of these species. Given that bycatch is ongoing, MCS considers it possible that the bycatch level is contributing to population decline and/or preventing recovery.Demersal trawls have contact with the seabed resulting in penetration and abrasion of habitat features. The impact of trawling on the seabed depends on the location and scale in which trawling occurs. For example, areas that are used to natural disturbance through tides and waves, are less sensitive to habitat impacts. Areas not used to mobile towed gears are typically more sensitive to trawling. Trawl gears are known to have some of the greatest impacts on Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs).Most of the hake fishery operates in the Celtic Seas and Bay of Biscay (ICES areas 7 and 8abd), but the specific footprint of the hake trawl fishery is not known. An estimated 45% of the Celtic Sea region and 19% of the Bay of Biscay was trawled in 2018. Fishing effort in both areas has been decreasing since the early 2000s. This has reduced the spatial fishing footprint and the average number of times the seabed is trawled per year. Most habitats are mud and sand, which are less vulnerable to trawling. However, in the Celtic Seas, 95% of areas where VMEs such as cold-water corals and sponges occur or are likely were found to have been fished between 2009 and 2011.Mitigation measures include a ban on bottom trawling below 800m, and restrictions from 400-600m – the areas where most VMEs are found. There remains some uncertainty about the location of some sensitive seabed habitats, so these remain at risk.There are Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in this area, some of which are designated to protect seabed features from damaging activities. This fishery overlaps with parts of these MPAs, but the proportion of the catch coming from these areas is expected to be relatively low in relation to the unit of assessment (i.e. less than 20% of the catch or effort), and so these impacts have not been assessed within the scale of this rating. Given the important role that MPAs have in recovering the health and function of our seas, MCS encourages the supply chain to identify if their specific sources are being caught from within MPAs. If sources are suspected of coming from within designated and managed MPAs, MCS advises businesses to establish if the fishing activity is operating legally inside a designated and managed MPA, and request evidence from the fishery or managing authority to demonstrate that the activity is not damaging to protected features or a threat to the conservation objectives of the site(s).To improve monitoring and reporting of fishing activity, MCS would like to see remote electronic monitoring (REM) with cameras implemented, used and enforced. ​To reduce the impacts of fishing on the marine environment we would like to see a just transition to the complete removal of bottom towed gear from offshore Marine Protected Areas designated to protect the seabed. We also want to see reduction and mitigation of environmental impacts including emissions and blue carbon habitat damage.

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