Since 2017, the proportion of French fishing from sustainably caught fish populations has stagnated around 51% in 2021, i.e. three percentage points more than in 2020. A figure still very far from the 100% target set for 2020 at European level, alerted the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) on Thursday.
To be precise, 51% of landings are from fish populations considered to be in good or recoverable condition, 33% are overfished and 2% collapsed, with the rest (24%) being unassessed or unclassified.
A marked improvement over the 2000s
The situation has clearly improved since 2000, when only 20% of landings came from sustainable fishing. But “since 2017, the share of landings from non-overfished populations has tended to stabilize”, noted Alain Biseau, fisheries biologist at Ifremer, during an online press conference.
The European objective within the framework of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is to achieve 100% of fished populations at the “maximum sustainable yield”, i.e. the optimum quantity which does not affect the reproductive capacity of the fish population.
“We are still a long way from that. That was the goal for 2020. We’re not there yet! “, noted Alain Biseau, who underlines that the stagnation observed in recent years “thwarts the idea that we can achieve this objective in the near future”.
“It’s a challenge for us scientists. Our forecasts may sometimes be too optimistic,” added the biologist, adding that the models may not have sufficiently integrated “all the uncertainties, particularly related to environmental variations such as climate change”.
