Members Post ::

In recent years approximately 85% of landings have been juvenile cod, aged 1 to 3 years.

On average 95% of a year class is taken out before it has spawned for the first time.

It is always argued by commercial fishermen’s representatives and politicians that there would be immediate and short-term economic and social implications if there was a drastic reduction in cod fishing opportunities.

This is not really reflected when one considers that the revenue from the Cod fisheries equates to less than 5% of Scotland’s fishery revenues.

Nor is it really reflected by the representatives and politicians themselves as both parties agree that there is too much focus on Cod as a benchmark for the state of fisheries.

Nevertheless, if exploitation and discard rates are not significantly reduced, there is a high probability that stock rebuilding will not occur due to the reduced reproductive capacity of the stock, and thus the economic and social implications will happen anyway.

The way to secure more cod surviving to reproduce can only be achieved

Around 80% of the Cod consumed in Europe comes from non-EU waters; the UK imports around 92% of its Cod, mainly from Icelandic, Norwegian, Faroese and Russian sources. In 2006, China became the number one supplier of frozen Cod fillet to the UK, overtaking Denmark .

In 2006 – 12,841 tonnes of cod were landed into the UK by UK vessels (down 7% from 2005) while 303,876 tonnes of cod were imported.

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