Falklands : Fisheries Committee News
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 26.10.2005 (Article Archived on 09.11.2005)
Find out what happened during the Fisheries Committee meeting.
COMMITTEE NEWS: FISHERIES COMMITTEE
Compiled by J. Brock (FINN)
A meeting of the Fisheries Committee took place on Tuesday, 25 October 2005 at 0900 in the Liberation Room of the Secretariat. After confirmation of the minutes of the meeting held on Tuesday, 26 July 2005 matters arising from those minutes were discussed with Cllr. Richard Cockwell saying a bit thank-you to everyone who worked tirelessly on the Fisheries (Conservation and Management) Bill 2005.
Section 19 and ITQ/PQ (Individual Transferable Quota/ Provisional Quota) of the Fisheries Ordinance 2005 took up the bulk of the discussion. The paper was generally accepted in the Working Group but they felt that further scrutiny of section 2 (b) of Clause19 needed to be further debated because an industry track record needed to be set either by catch data or effect. Awards would be made after the assessment.
A follow-up paper was recommended and the industry would be further consulted. A set sequence of years needed to be established for the statistics as some companies may benefit from various sequences of different years worth of data. Transparency in the methods used was needed and John Barton, Director of Fisheries noted that it was necessary to be thorough in producing the data before distributing it industry-wide. No one system based on catch or effort would be a clear winner and Mr. Barton suggested that it would be best to look at the whole picture after the assessment was completed.
The timetable for implementing the Fisheries Ordinance 2005 was discussed with amended policies being distributed in November-December and applications to be in by the end of January 2006 so that allocations can be made at the end of June or early July 2006. Aggregation Limits would be discussed in the December EXCO. Aggregation would be discussed at the next meeting tentatively set for 1330 hrs on the 25th of November 2005.
|
