AUTHOR=Martin Angela Helen , Ferrer Erica M. , Hunt Corallie A. , Bleeker Katinka , Villasante Sebastián 

TITLE=Exploring Changes in Fishery Emissions and Organic Carbon Impacts Associated With a Recovering Stock

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science

VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.788339

DOI=10.3389/fmars.2022.788339

ISSN=2296-7745

ABSTRACT=International objectives for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation require restoring fish populations to healthy levels and reducing fishing impacts on marine ecosystems. At the same time, governments, retailers and consumers are increasingly motivated to reduce the carbon footprint of food. These concerns are reflected in measures of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and the CFP Reform Regulation, which highlighted a need to move from traditional single-stock management towards an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAF). Using landings and effort data combined with estimates of adult population biomass, we explore the potential for lowering emissions intensity and impacts on organic carbon stocks through ending overfishing and rebuilding stocks. We use the recent recovery of European hake (Merluccius merluccius) stocks in the Northeast Atlantic as a case study. With a focus on the hake fisheries of France, Spain, and the UK for the 2008 and 2016 fishing years, we make a crude estimate of the influence of changing stock status on greenhouse gas emissions during the fishery phase from fuel use and perturbation of organic carbon in the ecosystem, specifically in sediments and hake biomass. Our findings indicate that recovery of the hake stock results in reductions in overall emissions intensity from fuel and proportional impact on hake populations, however, total emissions from both fuel and landings increased, as did disturbance of organic carbon in sediments due to benthic trawling. Ultimately, the aims of this analysis are to further work exploring the climate impacts of fisheries and overfishing, and to inform development of EAF in the EU.