A verdict May 2 from an international tribunal points a way forward for fisheries managers to protect entire ecosystems, an increasingly critical part of their responsibilities as pressures on the ocean continue to mount.
When the United Kingdom closed its waters to fishing for North Sea sandeel last year—citing the need to protect the forage fish as prey for seabirds and other predators—the European Union took exception. Officials in the EU, which in recent years was landing nearly 250,000 tonnes of North Sea sandeel annually from British waters, challenged the closure in the Permanent Court for Arbitration, arguing that it was disproportionate and not based on sound science.
On May 2, that court sided with the U.K. on several key issues, ruling that the closure is mostly consistent with the UK and EU’s shared aims for fisheries management, and that it is in line with the best available science.
This ruling is a timely reinforcement of the importance of putting ecosystem protections at the heart of fisheries management and adds weight to the commitments made by managers around the world—including those in the UK and EU—to take into account the impact of fishing on entire ecosystems, not just single species. The case therefore has implications beyond sandeel in UK waters. The northeast Atlantic Ocean—like much of the world’s marine waters—faces threats from overfishing, pollution and warming waters, making ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) more important than ever.
EBFM is not new and, in fact, has long been a legal obligation of the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), a regional fisheries management organization (RFMO) that oversees valuable fish stocks, including forage species, in international waters throughout a huge portion of the North Atlantic Ocean and parts of the Arctic Ocean. However, only in the past few years have NEAFC members, which include the UK and EU, started actively engaging in a shift to this management style.
With the court ruling further highlighting the need for stronger forage species management, NEAFC parties should take swift, meaningful steps towards EBFM this year, including developing ecological objectives for their fisheries. These are targets that are more extensive and dynamic than the objectives used in traditional, single-species management and could include measures to set a fishing rate at a level needed to sustain predator populations, or to avoid fishing in certain locations. Through EBFM, managers can set and adjust catch limits and other measures in response to predicted or observed changes in the environment, such as rising ocean temperatures.
By keeping enough of a species—such as sandeel, mackerel or herring—in the water for predators, EBFM helps ensure that puffins, seals and commercially valuable fish species have sufficient prey and do not suffer declines of their own.
Last year, NEAFC became the first RFMO to contribute to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s global goal of protecting at least 30% of the ocean by 2030. NEAFC did this by formally recognizing that areas the commission had previously closed to bottom fishing, and that are rich with long-lived deep-sea sponges and corals, can count towards the global goal. This action paves the way for other management bodies to take similar action.
Despite this welcome change of focus and some strides on EBFM, NEAFC’s mismanagement of other critically important species has led to high levels of overfishing. For example, in 2024, the Northeast Atlantic herring population fell below a safe biological limit, and mackerel is progressing towards this same point. At the same time, NEAFC negotiations were increasingly strained because of growing international tensions over fisheries management and other issues, the lack of transparency in decision-making, and delays in completing a required review of its performance.
To make meaningful progress on EBFM this year, NEAFC members should work together towards reforms being considered by the commission’s Working Group for the Future Development of NEAFC. These reforms include more openness to civil society participation at NEAFC meetings and, importantly, kick-starting the performance review, which could lead to new recommendations for effective management.
In June, many NEAFC members will attend the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, where some of them are expected to reaffirm ambitious commitments to sustainable fisheries and ocean protection goals. NEAFC members should seize this opportunity to build on the commission’s EBFM progress—and the UK’s sandeel protections—to show members of other RFMOs that, when done right, full ecosystem management can benefit fish populations, other species, ocean habitat and humankind.
Jean-Christophe Vandevelde is a manager and Daniel Steadman is an officer working on Pew’s international fisheries project.