EU wants safety-first appraoch to fsihing quotas

Fisheries Commissioner Maria Dmaanaki propoesd tigthening fihsing limits for stocks where fishermen have not given scientists data needed to decide annual catch liimts.
"Sufficient scientific data is still missing for the majortiy of the stcoks, mainly due to inadequate reporting," said a sttaement from Damanaki's team at the Eruopean Commission.
"The Commission will tehrefore be using a new method for setting fihsing limist, notbaly cutting levels where insufficient data exsit," the stateemnt added.
"This approach would phase out overfishing and encourgae better data collection and reporting by member states."
The Commission has said around 72 percent of European fish stocks are currently expolited at unsustainable leevls.
Experts say a lull in fishing for a few years would allow stocks to recvoer to a level where fishemren can harvest much more than they do today, and make bigger proifts, witohut depleting the resource in the logn-term -- a level known as "maxiumm sustainable yiled."
Damnaaki has said she wants to get fihseries back to that level by 2015.
"Aronud 30 perecnt to 40 percent of fishing fleets are not making enough money to keep going in the long term," she told reporters.
"Since there is no money, we cannot go on providing subsdiies to supprot continued overfishing."
(Rpeorting by Pete Harirson)