MSC SUSTAINABLE FISHERIES CERTIFICATION CVO Pulse Sole and Plaice Fishery Public Comment Draft Report November 2016 Prepared For: Coöperatieve Visserij Organisatie (CVO) Prepared By: Acoura Marine Limited Acoura Marine Ltd. Public Comment Draft Report CVO Pulse sole and plaice fishery Public Comment Draft Report December 2015 Authors: Rod Cappell, Giuseppe Scarcella, Gudrun Gaudian. Certification Body: Client: Acoura Coöperatieve Visserij Organisatie (CVO) Address: Address: Fisheries Department Postbus 64 6 Redheughs Rigg 8300 AB South Gyle Emmeloord Edinburgh EH12 9DQ Netherlands Scotland, UK Name: Fisheries Department Name: [email protected] Tel: +44(0) 131 335 6662 Tel: +31616914257 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Web: www.acoura.com 2 Version 2.0(01/06/13) Acoura Marine Ltd. Public Comment Draft Report CVO Pulse sole and plaice fishery Contents Glossary ................................................................................................................................................. 6 1. Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... 8 2. Authorship and Peer Reviewers ................................................................................................ 10 2.1 Assessment Team ................................................................................................................ 10 3. Description of the Fishery .......................................................................................................... 13 3.1 Unit(s) of Certification and scope of certification sought ....................................................... 13 3.2 Overview of the fishery .......................................................................................................... 14 3.3 Principle One: Target Species Background .......................................................................... 21 3.4 Principle Two: Ecosystem Background ................................................................................. 40 3.5 Principle Three: Management System Background.............................................................. 66 4. Evaluation Procedure ................................................................................................................. 74 4.1 Harmonised Fishery Assessment ......................................................................................... 74 4.2 Previous assessments .......................................................................................................... 75 4.3 Assessment Methodologies .................................................................................................. 75 4.4 Evaluation Processes and Techniques ................................................................................. 75 5. Traceability .................................................................................................................................. 79 5.1 Eligibility Date ........................................................................................................................ 79 5.2 Traceability within the Fishery ............................................................................................... 79 5.3 Eligibility to Enter Further Chains of Custody ....................................................................... 80 6. Evaluation Results ...................................................................................................................... 81 6.1 Principle Level Scores ........................................................................................................... 81 6.2 Summary of Scores ............................................................................................................... 81 6.3 Summary of Conditions ......................................................................................................... 82 6.4 Determination, Formal Conclusion and Agreement .................................................................... 82 7. References ................................................................................................................................... 83 Appendix 1. Scoring & Rationale ...................................................................................................... 93 Appendix 1a – MSC Principles & Criteria ......................................................................................... 93 Appendix 1.1 Performance Indicator Scores and Rationale ............................................................. 96 Appendix 1.2 Risk Based Framework (RBF) Outputs ................................................................... 186 Appendix 1.3 Conditions ................................................................................................................. 187 Appendix 2. Peer Review Reports .................................................................................................. 191 PR 1 ................................................................................................................................................ 191 PR 2 ................................................................................................................................................ 215 Appendix 3. Stakeholder submissions .......................................................................................... 225 Appendix 3a. ................................................................................................................................... 225 Appendix 3b. ................................................................................................................................... 233 Appendix 3c. ................................................................................................................................... 233 Appendix 4. Surveillance Frequency .............................................................................................. 234 3 Version 2.0(01/06/13) Acoura Marine Ltd. Public Comment Draft Report CVO Pulse sole and plaice fishery Appendix 4.1 Rationale for determining surveillance score ............................................................ 234 Appendix 5. Client Agreement ......................................................................................................... 235 Appendix 5.1 Objections Process .................................................................................................. 235 Appendix 6. Landings and Discard sampling data ........................................................................ 236 Appendix 7. Letter from Marine Conservation Society to the Pulse Implementation Group. ... 239 Appendix 8. Client response to Preliminary Draft Report ............................................................ 256 Appendix 8.1 Client Response ........................................................................................................ 256 Appendix 8.2 Acoura Response ..................................................................................................... 260 Table of Figures Figure 1 Map showing the Central and Southern North Sea ................................................................ 15 Figure 2 Schematics of a sumwing and electrodes for pulse trawling (a – showing detail of electrodes and b – view from below) ...................................................................................................................... 18 Figure 3 Pulse trawl gear entering the water ........................................................................................ 19 Figure 4 Transition in the flatfish fishery in the Netherlands ................................................................. 20 Figure 5 Plaice (pluronectes platessa) .................................................................................................. 21 Figure 6 Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB) of North Sea plaice for 1957 to 2015 with precautionary reference levels Bpa shown (source: ICES, 2015a) ............................................................................. 24 Figure 7 North Sea plaice total fishing mortality for landings plus discards. The precautionary reference point (Fpa) and Fmsy are based on total mortality (source: ICES, 2015a). ............................. 24 Figure 8 Recruitment of North Sea plaice at age 1 in billions (source: ICES, 2015a) .......................... 25 Figure 9 Relationship between the size of the spawning stock and number of recruits at age 1 (source: ICES, 2015a) ........................................................................................................................... 25 Figure 10 Landings (blue) and discards (red) of North Sea plaice in thousands of tonnes (source: ICES, 2015a) ......................................................................................................................................... 26 Figure 11 sole (solea solea) .................................................................................................................. 31 Figure 12 Distribution of sole (in red) (Source: fishbase) ..................................................................... 31 Figure 13 SSB of North Sea sole for the period 1957 to 2015 with Bpa and Blim shown (source: ICES, 2015b) ................................................................................................................................................... 33 Figure 14 North sea sole total fishing mortality