Spain Limits Size Of Tuna Purse Seiners In North Atlantic ff

Only 10% of the Galician fleet complies with the new purseseining regulations.

The new legislation issued by the Spanish Ministry of Fishery obliges the purseseining fleet, which fish in the Northeast Cantabrian, to have certain dimensions which the majority of Galician vessels is very far from fulfilling.

The legislation stipulates a minimum length of 18 meters for the purseseiners operating in Galician and Cantabrian waters, which is currently not being fulfilled by 90% of the fleet in the Galician ports.

Although the new regulation will not represent difficulties in the short term, since the vessels are allowed to continue fishing with their present dimension until they are thirty years old, it will bring long delays when renewal time comes because it will oblige the boatowners with small vessels to buy tonnage to adapt them to the measures demanded by Madrid. The syndicate CIG-Mar, after verifying that the average length average required by MAPA is far from the reality of Galician purseseiners, denounced this.

Fishery Council, Enrique Lopez Veiga, criticized the syndicate of “forging data” and denied that the new regulation would danger the future of the Galician fleet. The syndicate however insists that the “majority of vessels will reach an illegal status when reaching the 30 years of antiquity. A vessel of 23,5 meters length has about 50 tons. Based on this data, the 18 meters Madrid is requesting corresponds to 40-ton vessel. The average tonnage of the Galician purseseiners is at 25,5 tons considering the census of 242 boats with a total tonnage of 6,178.9 GRT.”

The average is far below to the demanded by Madrid, said Salvador Ribadomar, of CIG-Mar.  According to the syndicate and after analyzing the fleet tonnage average by per port, only about 20 purseseiners of Carino, Cediera-Aguiño, Ribeira and Foz fulfill the requirements of the new norm, representing a 10% of the purseseining fleet of the community.  “The tonnage average of the Malpica purseseiners is 24,7; of Vigo, 25; of Sada, 28; of Celeiro, 20. None of them are near to the required by Madrid,” he added.