>>What benefits will CODYSSEY bring?

Background and cod management problems

Fishing provides a healthy source of food and creates much-needed jobs in coastal areas and therefore promotes the social and economic well-being of the EU´s fishing regions. In addition, fishing is an important economic activity in its own right. Moreover, fishing supports many ancillary industries, such as shipbuilding and fish-processing. Fishing is a sound and credible route for some communities to advance to a reasonable level of prosperity based on a natural geographic advantage.

Cod is a high value roundfish species of considerable political and financial importance. Approximately 15% of landings by weight in the EU can be attributed to cod. Fisheries managers face a number of management problems for European cod stocks, some of them generic, some of them specific. Most seriously, stock decline in the NE Atlantic has alarmed fisheries managers everywhere. Scientific advice as to the declining abundance of cod stocks has caused serious concern amongst fisheries managers and fishermen alike. The Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of cod in the European waters has been steadily reduced for several years, causing economic hardship in communities dependent upon fishing. In the EU Green Paper on the future of the CFP, it is stated that "sustainable management of fisheries which restores fish stocks' productivity will offer improved economic and social returns to both the industry and society as a whole. Low stock levels have the opposite effect, leading to revenues that are too low to cover total costs and to capital and labour exit". The potential economic benefits of recovery are very significant therefore.

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) recommends that fishing mortality on cod should be reduced. The recent development of Recovery Plans for North Sea and Irish Sea cod stocks have highlighted the absence of high quality basic biological information on which to build robust multi-annual technical measures to conserve and rebuild stocks. After a meeting between the EU states, the Commission and Norway in early October 2001 it was advocated to provide further scientific basis to facilitate the development of the cod recovery plan.

Assuming that the cod Recovery Plans succeed in conserving and rebuilding stocks of cod, the lessons of the last few years should not be forgotten. Despite centuries of exploitation, little is known about the basic biology of cod, a situation which lead to great difficulties when technical measures in support of the short term Recovery Plans for the Irish and North Sea cod stocks were being developed. Considerable economic and social benefits are to be gained by instigating a large-scale cod research plan in advance of stock recovery, as has recently been indicated by the Commission in COM 2001 (326). Increasing our understanding of the spatial dynamics of stocks, and how the environment influences cod behaviour, enables rational decisions regarding the interpretation of stock assessments and appropriate management measures to be made with much greater confidence.

>>what benefits will CODYSSEY bring?