EU close to fishing deal
The EU was close to a deal today intended to protect cod and other threatened fish species from overfishing by setting up an agency to manage fisheries.
The once-common cod has long been a staple of European diets, but stocks have dropped dramatically in recent decades and increasingly tough catch quotas set by individual EU nations have failed to reverse the trend.
Fishermen say the system of national quotas has too many loopholes, and the proposed Community Fisheries Control Agency is intended to improve and streamline controls considered key to EU efforts to build a sustainable fishing industry.
If approved by EU ministers, the agency would be established in Vigo, Spain.
Last year, the EU rejected proposals to declare huge swathes of ocean off-limits for trawlers, settling instead for less drastic alternatives.
Scientists say North Sea stocks have shrunk to about a tenth of 1970 levels, and warned of depletion on the scale of eastern Canadian waters, where cod largely disappeared in the 1990s.
