Retrospective review of management advice and TAC's for some stocks

Abstract

During the part 20 years fisheries management in the Barents Sea and adjacent waters has been based on annual advice provided by The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, ICES. In the present paper the discrepancies between adviced, agreed and actual annual catches were investigated for some stocks in the period 1978-1998. The study showed that the agreed, and particularly the actual catches have frequently exceeded the advised ones. In addition the annual advice, particularly for northeast arctic cod, was found to be based on stock assessments which have given biased results: the annually estimated mortalities have as a rule been too low. These findings call for considerably more causion when TACs are decided on in future as compared with past and present experience.