The quota for fishing for sardines may change in the middle of the season. The limit for capture, at the national level, will be between 13500 and 14500 tons, but Ana Paula Vitorino, Minister of the Sea, said, on the sidelines of the Congress of Marine Biology, which started today at the University of Algarve, that "a measurement [of stocks] will be made in the middle of the campaign and we will be able to adjust, up or down, the limits, depending on the results".
Ana Paula Vitorino says, in relation to stocks, that she doesn't see “the need to go below 13500 tons and I don't see a great possibility of going beyond 14500. a month, according to the minister.
According to the official, "if the evidence, during the campaign, says that we can go further, we will send new data to the European Commission and we can increase the stocks a little." Ana Paula Vitorino believes that, «on the part of the Commission, there is an opening for flexible management in relation to these values».
The Minister of the Sea explained that, in the case of managing the capture of sardines, “there has to be a tripartite negotiation. In terms of fixing catch amounts, it is an adjusted value between Portugal and Spain, which was then negotiated with the European Commission. Although sardines are not yet subject to a community quota, they are still a species with sustainability problems. If the European Commission finds that Portugal and Spain are not knowing how to manage the species, there is a risk of becoming a species with a quota fixed by the EU, like others, such as horse mackerel and anchovy».
This is a scenario that Ana Paula Vitorino does not want to happen, “because it is different to negotiate with the European Commission, based on our data, and another thing is to be imposed on us [the quota], because that is what is in the common policy of fisheries'. The minister wants to “avoid reaching a point where something is imposed on us by the Commission. Therefore, IPMA and its Spanish equivalent have to work harder, more in concert, and that is what they are doing.
Two or three IPMA cruises are taken each year to assess sardine stocks, the first of which will be done "in the spring".
At this time, fishermen cannot catch sardines and, last week, Cristóvão Norte, deputy of the PSD, questioned the Minister of the Sea about the delay in the payment of compensation. Ana Paula Vitorino guaranteed that these “have already started to be paid on time. The difference is that, last year, compensation was greater than this year because the alternatives for other stocks are different».
This year, “there will be a month of compensation, due to the restrictions of the European regulation, which we have to strictly comply with. If we do not do this, we are left without the Community funds of EUR 508 million. This regulation only allows for six months of compensation, during the entire period of these funds, that is, between 2013 and 2020. We cannot give more. It's six months, to seven years, and there have been years in which we took two months», he concluded.
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