Conservation of fishery resources: juveniles of marine organisms

PURPOSE : to establish new control measures for fishing with a view to conforming to the new measures recently adopted by the ICCAT on the subject of minimum landing sizes for bluefin tuna. CONTENT : the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), to which the Community is party, has as its objective to ensure the conservation and the management of resources of tuna in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas. The ICCAT adopted conservation and management measures which became binding on the contracting parties, of which the Community is one. At its 11th extraordinary session held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain (November 1998), the ICCAT recommended certain rules on minimum landing sizes of blue fin tuna. In particular, a previous recommendation to prohibit the landing of bluefin tuna of age 0, which was interpreted hitherto as fish weighing 1.8 kg, has been modified to prohibit any landing of fish below 3.2 kg, in order to give additional protection to juvenile fish. It was also recommended to change the dates of the existing closure for purse seine fishing (it shall be forbidden to take bluefin tuna with an encircling net: - for vessels whose exclusive and predominant area of operation is the Adriatic, from 1 to 31 May in the whole Mediterranean Sea, and from 16 July to 15 August in the Mediterranean Sea, excluding the Adriatic; - and for vessels whose exclusive or predominant area of operation is the Mediterranean, excluding the Adriatic, from 16 July to 15 August in the whole Mediterreanean Sea and from 1 to 31 May in the Adriatic). As these recommendations entered into force on 21.06.1999 for the contracting parties, the Community is required to to incorporate them in internal Community law. Thus, as a consequence, this proposal amends Regulations 1626/94/EC and 850/98/EC concerned by these international recommendations.�