5 ToR b Significant adverse impacts of fishing gears
5.4 Emergent issues
In carrying out the assessment, a number of difficulties arose that may have reso‐
nance for other assessments both for gear, and for other pressures.
• What is the minimum level of proportional impact that would constitute an important pressure? For example, if a particular gear, caught less than 5% of a fish stock that was below Bpa, would that gear pressure be assessed as a “cause” of that SAI evaluation? Equally, while beam trawling is ac‐
knowledged as having a major impact on the North Sea habitats, this will compounded with otter trawl impacts that are also acknowledged as major (Kaiser et al., 2006, Løkkeberg, 2003).
• Standard reference points for assessed fish species are Bpa and Blim. We have indicated here that when a stock is over Bpa in the current year, it can be considered as NSAI, even when it has been below Bpa over a number of previous years. Is there a need for a time‐scale factor, e.g., “has been below Bpa for 4 out of the last 5 years”?
• Again, we assessed stocks below Bpa as SAI. However while Bpa requires reduced fishing to allow recovery, SAI requires a complete halt to the re‐
sponsible activity. The two concepts are not mutually compatible in terms of response.
• What are the appropriate “natural” reference conditions? OSPAR defines these as “pre‐industrial”. But for instance, beam trawling in the southern North Sea was responsible for permanently modifying the physical habitat many years ago; removal of boulders and oyster beds. This is likely to be irreversible. Is it sensible to permanently assign an SAI category on this basis? Or should we consider more recent impacts and take the reference
as the modified habitat? Similar questions arise for seabirds and other components.
• What geographic extent constitutes an important impact? If one small area is very seriously impacted, but the rest is largely pristine, how does one as‐
sign SAI/NSAI? The distributional ranges for vulnerable or endangered species are particularly important in this context; e.g., is the species endan‐
gered across its range or locally.
• In many species cases, especially fish, a whole stock for a species may be below Bpa, and therefore in an SAI status. At the same time, it may be pos‐
sible that individual pressures e.g., from different gears do not make an important contribution to that status assessment. Equally, one stock of a species may be SAI, while another may not. There is probably a need for a nested approach to such species evaluations.
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