Discards, discards

The EU fisheries commision wants to ban discards.

Discarding results in as much as two-thirds of the fish caught being thrown back in the water, with about 1m tonnes estimated to be thrown back each year in the North Sea alone. So why there's so much resistance among European fishermen?

Because discarding is a consequence of the strict quotas in the EU under the common fisheries policy on the amount of fish that boats may land. When fishermen exceed their quota, or catch species of fish for which they do not have a quota, they must discard the excess. If Ms. Damanaki, the Commissioner, wants to stop or reduce discards, the way is to reform the EU fisheries management by stopping single-species managing in multi-species fisheries, and replacing the ITQ quota system with management by input that would fit the different fisheries according to the biology and ecology of the targeted species.