According to the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer), if we look at the volume of fish landed by fishing boats in France in 2020, the finding is that 56% of these fish come from fishing sustainable, in other words, of populations whose stocks are in good condition or recovering.
The situation has therefore greatly improved, because 20 years ago only 15% of fishing, almost four times less, came from sustainably exploited populations. Among the products of the sea, which can therefore be consumed without guilt at present, there are, for example, scallops from the English Channel, hake from the Bay of Biscay, the Celtic Sea or the North (Attention, not Mediterranean hake, on the other hand, whose stocks have collapsed). Everything is also going well for haddock in the Celtic Sea, whiting in the North Sea, or the English Channel and the populations of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean are now also on the way to recovery.
An improvement to be linked to compliance with quotas, areas or fishing periods, and with the impact of technical constraints such as the size of the meshes of the nets, indicates Ifremer.
Nearly 60% of fish come from sustainable fishing, 40% have not been assessed but 11% of the total weight of fish landed concerns overfished fish, such as sole or Atlantic horse mackerel . Even more worrying, 10% of the fish caught come from populations considered to have collapsed. This is the case of Mediterranean hake, cod in the North and Celtic Seas, or sardines in the Bay of Biscay.
Hence the importance of not declaring victory too soon and of maintaining good fisheries management because in the future the evolution of environmental conditions risks having an additional impact on marine ecosystems with the increase in temperature, ocean acidity and pollution risks. For example, Ifremer researchers have already noted that Mediterranean sardines have lost a quarter of their size and live less long; due to a change in the quality of the plankton, linked to the environment.