Fishing status
We see many indications that the sandeel season 2015 could have been top season in decades with the catching vessels queuing up waiting for discharging to start. The management of the stock this year is so poor, and the area administration makes profitable fishing impossible. It seems that the scientific advice for the stock does not correspond at all with the real world.
The enforced Olympic fishing undermines any planned fishing effort, and the basic rights and values in the ITQ system are completely disregarded.
We need to strengthen and improve the work for the scientific advice for the sandeel stock. We need to consider the area system carefully, and we need to improve the data collection for the sandeel fishing, so that we can reinstall the dynamics in this fishing.
The scientists lost as well
Nobody made profit from the Olympic approach. The competition in the fishing caused lean fish and long queues for discharging. The fishmeal plants now are out of rawmaterial after a short season with low quality and too high productions cost. Even the scientists have lost. They will now loose valuable samples and data from the second half of the season.