Norwegian capelin recommendations halved

Capelin recommendations halved

NORWAY

Wednesday, October 23, 2002, 20:00 (GMT + 9)

The Norwegian share of the quota will be
around 185,000 tonnes. (Photo:O Hjellestad)

Next winter's Barents Sea capelin fisheries will most probably be halved compared to this year. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is proposing a capelin quota of 310,000 tonnes for 2003, down from 650,000 tonnes this year.
The Norwegian share of the quota will be around 185,000 tonnes, down from 383,000 tonnes this year. The proposed quota reduction comes as no surprise. The Institute of Marine Research (IMR) in Bergen and Russia's PINRO have found that the capelin biomass has been halved from 4.3 million tonnes two years ago to 2.2 million tonnes this year (see World News, 11 October).

The outlook for the coming generations is not good, according to the IMR. Due to low recruitment, the 2004 quota could be even lower than the proposed 2003 quota. The capelin stocks are within safe biological limits and the spawning stocks are at around 1.3 million tonnes, but this is expected to drop to 0.7 million tonnes by spawning in April next year, due to feeding by cod and sea mammals. ICES recommends a total allowable catch (TAC) of 310,000 tonnes, providing catching is carried out from January to April and catch efforts are directed at the spawning stocks and not juveniles.

By Odin Hjellestad

FIS Europe