ICES Scientific Reports. 2:114. 237 pp.

Abstract

Under regulation (EU) 2016/2336, the EU fleet will be banned from bottom fishing in all waters between 400 and 800m in depth, apart from within the existing fishing footprint. Within the fishing footprint, EU vessels will be prohibited from bottom fishing in any closed areas that might be introduced to protect VMEs. To meet these regulatory requirements, ICES was requested by the European Commission to provide “advice on the list of areas where VMEs are known to occur or are likely to occur and on the existing deep-sea fishing areas (ref. (EU)2016/2336)”. The ICES workshop WKEUVME was tasked to produce the technical evidence base for producing a set of regulatory area options, building on 2019 work (Technical Service and WKREG workshop), as well as previous ICES advice (ICES 2018a) and technical services (ICES 2018b). The work drew upon the most recent fishing activity and vulnerable marine ecosystem (VME) distribution data at ICES, which has been quality assured following the respective annual ICES data calls for VMS/logbook (link) and VMEs (link). The assessment procedure herein is fully documented, with the respective scripts to run the assessment available on an open source platform (WKEUVME GitHub site). Two “assessment sheets” with respective regulatory area options for two larger ecoregions (Bay of Biscay and Iberian Coast, and the Celtic Seas) were produced. These assessment sheets served as the basis for dissemination documents for managers – stakeholders meeting of WKEUVME in September 2020, and could be incorporated into their respective annual ICES Ecosystem and Fisheries Overviews in future. There are also strong links to shallower water assessment procedures developed by WGFBIT (Working Group on Fisheries Benthic Impact and Trade-offs) that have been developed for the ICES Ecosystem Overview advice in the context of Descriptor 6 seafloor integrity of the EC’s marine strategy framework directive (MSFD). WKEUVME used a data-driven approach to provide management options for this request. Two broad scenarios were provided, each with two options. For each option a set of rules was defined for producing the outcomes. The first scenario defined VME closure polygons without any modification by known fishing activity. The first option under this scenario focused on VME habitats and areas with a High or Medium VME Index score (a multi-criteria assessment method developed by WGDEC). The second option included areas identified in option 1 and added in areas where four types of VME elements were present (areas where VMEs are likely to occur: seamounts, banks, coral mounds, and mud volcanoes); allowing managers to choose the level of precaution they wish to apply in protecting VMEs. The second scenario identified areas where the fishing footprint overlapped with VMEs and then used VME biomass/fishing intensity relationships to identify a threshold (swept-area ratio (SAR) < 0.43) for areas where effort was low and unlikely to have caused Significant Adverse Impacts to the VMEs (at C-square resolution). Two options for closing areas under this scenario were presented: the first where VME habitats and areas with a High or Medium VME Index score (irrespective of fishing effort) and only Low VME Index score with low fishing effort were closed; the other where all areas of VME presence (habitats and Low, Medium and High VME Index values) were closed, but only in areas of low fishing effort, on the basis that any VME habitat in heavily fished C-squares would be degraded