SGS Product & Process Certification - Marine Stewardship Council

General Comments on the Assessment Report (optional)
1. In the North Sea two species of the genus Pollachius occur: Pollachius virens or saithe and Pollachius pollachius or pollack. In the
southern North Sea only adult specimens of pollack occur. The species shown in Figure 4 is a clear example of a pollack. Saithe in the
North Sea has a much more northerly distribution. All references throughout the report to saithe should be changed in pollack. Agreed, text
etc amended as required.
Also there is no quota for pollack in the North Sea (ICES area IV) and the text below figure 4 on TAC and management should therefore be
deleted. Done
2. Our knowledge of sea bass, life history, stocks, and also fishery, is largely based on what is known for English waters. About the
situation in the Netherlands not a lot is known, but what is known has been used in the report.
3. A number of times the remark is made that there are no discards in this fishery. But at the same time it is said that small cod, below the
legal minimum size, are thrown back into the sea (paragraph 4.1 on page 28). So there are discards, and survival of these discards is
probably quite high, and no threat to the recovery of the North Sea cod stock. Remarks that there are no discards should be rephrased. The
text has been amended to clarify that the only discards are of species that are retained and landed, and that there is no non-retained by
catch (a difficulty with the MSC definitions).
4. Page 48, line 5 under Table 8: it is not clear to me where the score of 2.7 comers from.
In the footer of the same page it is said that weightings are given in Table 10 above: there is no table 10. The text above Table 8 explains
how the selectivity values for each of the hook and line, gill net and trawl fisheries were scored, but the aggregate score (2.7) was obtained
by weighting these scores (2,2,3) by the proportional landings taken by the 3 metiers in the North Sea (Table 10 is immediately below). The
foot note has now been incorporated in the text for clarification.
5. Under Recommendation 1 (page 56) it is said that the Client should encourage IMARES to extend the collection of biological information
on sea bass landed in the Netherlands. As long as this is not a ―legal task‖, or as long as this data-collection is not specifically paid for it is
highly unlikely that this will be done by IMARES. Point noted
6. In the scoring comments for 2.3.1 (page 84) spurdog (Squalus acanthias) is being mentioned as incidentally being caught. It does not
seem very likely to catch spurdog in this area. More likely the ―shark‖ that is being caught are smooth hound (Mustelus sp.). We have to
take information from the client who, incidentally, fish widely across the southern North Sea where spurdog do occur.
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