§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what arrangements exist for reporting and recording the catches made by EEC and 471W other foreign vessels in the British 200-mile limit and for comparing these with EEC catch quotas as reported in the country of origin.
§ Mr. Buchanan-SmithOur fishery protection forces carry out boardings at sea within our fishery limits and inspections in port ill order to check fishing vessels' compliance with fishery regulations. In the course of these checks information is collected on catches and catch rates. In addition, all the countries whose vessels fish within United Kingdom fishery limits have arrangements for collecting statistics on landings in their ports and information on where the fish concerned was caught.
The EEC has arrangements with non-EEC countries for the latter to inform the Commission of catches by their vessels within the waters of EEC member States. These arrangements are to enable the Commission to check non-EEC countries' catches against their quotas. In addition, the EEC Council of Ministers
HERRING STOCK† Year North Sea/English Channel Celtic Sea Irish Sea Metric tonnes West of Scotland 1974 … … … … 12,548 2,261 3,194 547 1975 … … … … 20,391 1,924 813 1,293 1976 … … … … 14,468 1,919 651 1,528 1977 … … … … 1,613 106 85 1,548 1978 … … … … 2,016* 4* 174* 1,409* Source: ICES. * Provisional. †As defined by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).