Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment announced the reopening of the purse seine fisheries in waters of the south of Galicia and horse mackerel for all fishing modes in the Gulf of Cadiz.
This decision was made after considering the temporary transfer of the quotas set by the Andalusian and Galician fisheries sectors, which will maintain open two important fisheries that are currently closed.
Given the possibility that anchovy can appear in the waters of Galicia, south of Cape Finisterre, the Andalusian purse seine sector has decided to make an assignment of anchovy quota of 200 tonnes, which had been assigned to this fleet.
Meanwhile, the Galician sector has accepted the possibility of establishing a similar reserve of 200 tonnes, in this case 100 tonnes of horse mackerel and 100 tonnes of mackerel so that the horse mackerel fishery can be reopened in the Gulf of Cadiz, after having been closed since August 16 for all fishing modes.
Thanks to the exchanges among sectors, from today seine boats in the northwest Cantabrian have the possibility of landing anchovy, and the vessels based in the ports in the Gulf of Cadiz will be allowed to land horse mackerel.
Thus, from 0:00 today anchovy can be landed in the northern zone IXa — in Galicia — and horse mackerel in the southern IXa in the Gulf of Cadiz.
The Ministry states that this mechanism of quota exchange or transfer is the fastest and most effective way to maximize the use of fishing quotas at all times, and reduce potential discards of these species due to lack of quota available in those moments.
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