SGS Product & Process Certification - Marine Stewardship Council

the bass trawl fishery and the possibilities for improving their exploitation pattern as part of the harvest strategy. The only reference I could find to trawl
meshes was in 9.2.3 – the PSA step 2 – susceptibility, where a high risk score of 3 was correctly given. Perhaps the P1 assessor could add any relevant
trawl mesh information to the appropriate section of the report and discuss the implications for bass stock status. Mesh size controls for towed gears in
which bass is a target species are included in Council Regulation 850/1998, but most bass are taken as a by catch in gears for which mesh size
controls depend on other target species. Text amended to clarify.
The current harvest strategy has no mechanism to control fishing effort in the event of a need to reduce fishing effort to combat a fall in stock abundance
resulting from excessive fishing effort or natural climatic changes. It would be wrong to assume that the bass stock will continue to expand its range
and abundance in response to the favourable changes in sea temperature that have taken place in the recent past. Agreed, but the harvest strategy is
designed to achieve management objectives in terms of yield per recruit and MSY, since growth overfishing rather than recruit overfishing has been
identified as the principle cause of loss of production in sea bass stocks (in which a wide variability in recruitment is related to environmental factors
rather than SSB). In this way the harvest strategy is responsive to the state of the stock (protecting year classes for up to 5 years before they recruit to
the fishery and spawning population), and we consider that the SG 80 are met (since analysis and simulations have demonstrated the elements of the
harvest strategy have been work together to achieving the management objectives: see Pawson et al., 2005; Pawson et al, 2007 and ICES 2010).
Based on the above comments SG 1-80 is not met as the harvest strategy does not have explicit mechanisms to respond appropriately to a change in
the state of the stock using effort control and/or mesh size increases. This score should be