When ICES presented its advice for the central Baltic herring last year, there was a lot of confusion. Many asked how the scientists could say that herring fishing needed to be stopped at the same time as they recommend catch quotas of up to 52 000 tonnes.

In fact, ICES did neither. The confusion was due to a misunderstanding of what the scientists actually wrote. At the top of the first page of its advice for fishing herring in the Central Baltic in 2024 ICES wrote:

‘ICES advises that when the EU multiannual plan (MAP) for the Baltic Sea is applied, catches in 2024 that correspond to the F ranges in the plan are between 41 706 (corresponding to FMSY lower × SSB2024/MSY Btrigger) and 52 459 tonnes (corresponding to FMSY × SSB2024/MSY Btrigger).’

This is known as the headline advice. To be properly understood, ICES advice needs to be seen in the context of the MAP, and the basic agreement between the European Commission and ICES.

Article 4 in the MAP regulation sets out objectives and the rules that the Commission and Council of fisheries ministers are to follow when deciding on fishing opportunities, sometimes referred to as TACs (Total Allowable Catch), catch limits or quotas. Read in full, the MAP-regulation has a clear structure, with a hierarchy of rules, depending in part on how robust the stock is assessed to be. 

 “Information” commonly misunderstood as “a recommendation”

Under an agreement between the European Commission and ICES from 2023, for the target stocks covered by the Baltic MAP (cod, herring and sprat), ICES is, as in previous years, to present the catches corresponding to the point value of FMSY and the F-ranges around that value in the headline advice. That is, ICES is to inform the Commission and others who read the advice what the estimated catches would be, given the forecasts of stock growth and yield, for an interval provided for in the management plan under Articles 4.1 and 4.3. A condition for this, however, is that there is adequate data and assessments to provide this information.

This information is commonly misunderstood (or perhaps misrepresented) as a recommendation. A factor contributing to the confusion is the use of the phrase “ICES advises….”

As frequent viewers of American television programmes about police will have seen, those about to question a suspect may sometimes ask if he “has been advised of his rights”. This is a reference to the requirement to inform suspects of their so-called “Miranda rights”, not asking if the suspect has been given recommendation. That is, the word “advises” can mean “recommends” or “informs”, depending on the context. 

An example of the difference between an ICES recommendation as opposed to ICES information in the headline advice can be found in the 2023 advice for the western Baltic cod. There ICES say that 'habitat restoration efforts, focusing on the reduction of eutrophication to improve bottom oxygen content, are recommended'. 

Another illustration of the nature of the headline advice as information rather than a recommendation can be seen in the 2018 advice for the same stock. There, ICES advised in the headline advice that the commercial catches corresponding to the F-ranges in the MAP were between 5867 and 22 238 tonnes. Further, that the entire range is considered precautionary when applying the ICES rule. On page 4, a discussion of the significant role of the 2016 year class concluded by stating that 'ICES suggests to use the FMSY lower value in the MAP when setting the TAC', that is, a commercial catch of 5867 tonnes. 

In the event, the Council of Ministers ignored what clearly was a recommendation and approved a catch of 9 515 tonnes. It also turned out that the dominant 2016 year class was overestimated. The fishery collapsed a few years later.

No ICES position on TAC for central Baltic herring

Despite that experience, as noted above, the agreement between ICES and the European Commission from 2023 does not mandate or suggest (nor, for that matter, prohibit) an executive summary, it merely requires that ICES present the interval of the forecast maximum sustainable yield according to the multiannual plan. 

One might perhaps understand if some biologists were discouraged by such an experience.

In the example of the central Baltic herring, in the headline advice ICES informed the Commission and others what the catch would be under provisions of Article 4.3 in the MAP. On page 3 of its central herring advice report ICES also informed the Commission and other stakeholders that the mandatory condition for Article 4.6 would not be fulfilled even with no fishing. 

But the biologists did not take a position on how much fishing should be allowed. Or if Art. 4.6 in the MAP should take priority over Art. 4.3 or not. (The MAP itself is relatively clear on that: the language of Art. 4.6 – '…shall in any event…' is unusually sharp.) 

Neither did the biologists take a position on how to weigh the short-term economic interests of some large-scale fish meal fishers against those fishing for human consumption, or coastal fishers, or the medium- or long-term economic interests, or the environment.

They left those considerations to others and merely provided information. But more information than that found in the headline advice.

Not a newspaper article

In a newspaper article, a reader might expect to find the important information in the headline and the lead sentence. In reading a contract, or an insurance policy, professional readers understand that crucial information may be found in the fine print or even the footnotes. 

Many tend to read the ICES advice as they would read a newspaper article, rather than an insurance policy. For example, a highly placed official from the European Commission said at a session of the fisheries committee of the European Parliament on December 7, 2023 that ‘The only thing you need to read is the headline advice…read the first four lines’ of the ICES advice, that is, the catches corresponding to the F-ranges in the MAP in the headline advice. 

In the example of the 2023 advice for the central Baltic herring, though, the information that even with no fishing the provision the fishing stock would be below Blim (in the red zone) the coming year was on page 3. 

Although it is not mentioned in the text, a diagram in Figure 1 on page 1 showed that the spawning stock biomass had very likely been below Blim (in the red zone) for some years.

ICES advice on CBH 2023

By applying the relationship between MSYBtrigger and Blim provided in Table 4 on page 4 to the information on the in table 10 on page 10, it can be inferred that the stock has been in the danger zone since 2020 (that is, SSB relative to MSYBtrigger is less than 0.50). 

Table 2 on page 2 shows that the probability of the stock remaining the red zone (that is, SSB<Blim) in 2025 would 29% when fishing at the lower bound of the F-range interval. In other words, the probability of the stock being in the red zone, which under Art. 4.6 in the MAP should be less than 5%, would be nearly six times that much when fishing at over 41 000 tonnes. This is, however, not stated in the text. 

In Table 3 on page 3, ICES states that the advice based on the F-ranges used in the management plan is considered precautionary.*

Presumably, this is under the assumption that the data used in to models to forecast the growth of the stock are correct. However, farther down on page 3 ICES also writes that there is evidence of misreporting of herring and sprat, and that misreporting 'undermines the data quality used in the assessment and introduces a level of uncertainty in the assessment and advice that cannot be quantified.'

On page 4, ICES explains that the central Baltic herring actually consists of a number of different stock components. The central Baltic herring complex is thus vulnerable to loss of both genetic diversity and overall productivity. In other words, unselectively fishing on aggregations of different sub-populations can both reduce biodiversity and the future growth of the stock. ICES points out that its advice does not take these impacts into consideration in its advice.

Something missing from the 2023 central Baltic herring advice, however, is a diagram that ICES previously presented for this stock that gives an indication of the high level of inaccuracy of earlier stock growth forecasts. An innocuous explanation is that a new type of model for the assessment was introduced that year, so the level of uncertainty could be different and comparisons with previous years may not be relevant. If so, the diagrams illustrating the retrospective analyses (giving some indication of how “on target” earlier growth forecasts have been), can be expected to return in future versions. 

Conclusion – missing the devils in the details

In sum, focusing on the catch levels presented by ICES in the headline advice ignores vital information. ICES own figures show that fishing at such levels would give a degree of risk that is far higher than that compatible with the MAP-regulation. Given the impact of poor data on the uncertainty of the growth forecast, the degree of risk is even higher than ICES’ calculation would suggest. Fishing at such levels would therefore probably not be sustainable even in the limited sense of the productivity of the fish, that is, of the objective of the MAP-regulation for stocks to recover to and remain in the green zone. 

But the MAP regulation also has an environmental objective. The environmental aspect will be treated in Part 2 of this article, soon to be published on this page. 

* This, it should be noted, refers to ICES specific definition of “precautionary”, which arguably may be weaker than what is normally understood by laymen, and differs from the definition used in basic regulation of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy.

Text: Charles Berkow