Proposal for a Council Regulation fixing for 2013 and 2014 the fishing opportunities for EU vessels for certain deep-sea fish stocks

Deep-sea stocks are fish stocks caught in waters beyond the main fishing grounds of continental shelves. They are distributed on the continental slopes or associated with seamounts. Most of these species are slow-growing and long-lived, which makes them particularly vulnerable to fishing activity. Another imporant element in a species' vulnerability to fishing is whether it can be targeted in local aggregations, particularly at the time of spawning.

Limiting the fishing activity is a necessary public intervention in order to prevent the erosion of income for fishermen, to develop exploitation towards higher long-term yields, and to reduce the impact on the ecosystem and food web as a consequence of sudden reductions in the size of certain fish populations. In the case of deep-sea species, the public intervention is of particular importance due to the fact that the recovery from depletion of slow-growing stocks might take a very long time or might even fail.

This proposal establishes by way of a Regulation, for EU fishing fleets, the catch limitations for the commercially most important deep-sea species in EU and international waters of the North-East Atlantic, in order to achieve the objective of the Common Fisheries Policy of ensuring fisheries at levels that are biologically, economically and socially sustainable.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)579: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:579:FIN

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