Seafish has published a report emphasizing on the potential economic impacts of proposed legislation by the European Commission (EC) on deep sea stocks.

The aim of the proposed bill is to phase out bottom-sea trawling in Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs), through the introduction of permits and authorizations to fish for deep sea stocks. This legislation also includes allocating species like ling and conger eel as 'deep sea' species. This amendment will have a negative effect on vessels, which partly catch these species even in shallow waters.

The Economic Impact Assessment conducted on behalf of Seafish by Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) has suggested a number of other options to the proposed legislation, which in the first draft could potentially affect over 600 UK vessels.

The other option proposed in the report includes eliminating conger eel and ling from the 'deep sea' species list, setting a 400m depth rule for deep sea stocks and allocating particular areas for deep sea fishing. If these alternatives are adopted then they would result into much fewer vessels being affected by the legislation.

"We believe these alternatives minimize the number of vessels affected while more reliably meeting the environmental protective objectives of the proposal than a catch percentage-based ban would achieve", said Roy Smith, part of the Common Fisheries Policy team at Defra.

Roy Smith also said that this more practical and dependable approach, which at the same time minimizes unnecessary impacts, is possible to be more acceptable to member states, allowing faster agreement of essential measures.

Seafish, Defra, Marine Scotland and the Scottish White Fish Producers Association (SWFPA) have funded the project.

John Anderson, senior economist at Seafish said that the commission's first impact assessment didn't have much information on the potential economic implications of the offer, so they addressed the knowledge gap.