The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has advised that cod quotas in the North Sea and adjacent waters should be reduced to zero in 2026.
The Northern shelf cod is made up of three substocks – Northwestern, Southern and Viking – which mix and are often caught together in the same fisheries. Applying the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) approach with precautionary safeguards, ICES warns that the Southern substock is so depleted that any catch would drive it below critical biomass limits. Because the three stocks intermix and due to the fact that ICES says it cannot reliably quantify how much the different substocks overlap spatially or seasonally, the council concludes that even limited fishing of the healthier Northwestern or Viking stocks could endanger the fragile Southern stock. As a result, it has recommended a zero catch for 2026.
The advice has drawn criticism from Scottish fishing bodies. In a statement by The Shetland Fishermen’s Association (SFA), chair and skipper James Anderson called the recommendation “fleet-ending madness”. He added: “Governments cannot expect fishing businesses, surrounded by cod, to tie up for a year and still be here in 2027.”
The SFA claims that further quota reductions would not do anything to encourage growth in the cod stock and has proposed alternative measures. These include expanded spawning-zone closures, a voluntary 30% TAC reductions for haddock and whiting to reduce cod bycatch in mixed fisheries, and total allowable catch constraint to limit annual quota fluctuations.
