Agriculture
Flounder and Sole Populations Recover in the North Sea Due to Fleet Sanitation
Scientists report that fish stocks in the North Sea have significantly recovered following substantial fleet reductions, allowing for increased quotas next year. Jaap van der Meer, emeritus professor, noted that most populations have healed after years of overfishing concerns. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) advised higher quotas for sole and slightly lower ones for plaice, attributing the recovery to the scrapping of over 100 trawlers since 2014. While catch volumes remain far below peak levels, ICES states that less than 30% of the plaice quota was utilized. However, Merel den Held of Stichting De Noordzee criticized bottom-trawling methods as unsustainable due to high bycatch and environmental damage, arguing that the industry's primary challenges are economic rather than ecological.
Ozetta summarises; the reporting is the newsroom's