European bycatch advice outlines expanded monitoring and mitigation demands, raising costs and feasibility concerns for the fishing industry. Photo: ICES
ICES Bycatch Advice Sets Out Expanding Scope
ICES has released its latest advice on bycatch of endangered, threatened and protected species across European fisheries, alongside the underlying data product used to support that advice.
Together, they present a comprehensive but demanding picture of how bycatch is being measured, interpreted and acted upon at EU level.
The advice covers marine mammals, seabirds, marine turtles and selected fish species regarded as priorities by the European Commission. It draws on reported data from 22 countries and assesses bycatch both as annual estimated numbers for 2024 and as multiannual bycatch rates from 2017 to 2024. These rates are expressed as bycatch per unit effort, based largely on days at sea.
ICES is clear that overall data quality is improving, but remains inconsistent. Monitoring coverage, particularly on vessels under 12 metres, is described as limited and insufficient for reliable estimation. The advice repeatedly points to gaps in fishing effort reporting, problems with species identification and a lack of harmonised sampling protocols across fleets and regions.
Monitoring Expectations Continue To Rise
A central theme of the advice is the strong preference for at-sea observers and electronic monitoring systems. ICES states that these are the only methods considered robust enough for bycatch assessment, while data from logbooks or port sampling are explicitly excluded from advisory calculations. The practical implication is an expectation of wider camera coverage and increased physical observer deployment.
ICES also recommends that fishing and monitoring effort data should be submitted even when no bycatch has occurred. The rationale is statistical completeness, but this places additional administrative pressure on fleets already operating under multiple reporting regimes.
