Defending Sustainable Fisheries Management in Europe
Oceana
Oceana is the largest international environmental organisation focused solely on protecting and restoring the world’s oceans. Oceana in Europe carries out policy and advocacy work at the EU and Member State level to improve, enforce and fully implement ocean conservation and fisheries management laws and EU Directives. With over 20 years of experience working in Europe, our cross-disciplinary campaign team of policy experts, marine scientists, and communicators work cohesively to bring about policy changes that address the most urgent problems confronting the marine environment.
Oceana has a permanent presence and representation in nearly 20 different working/stakeholder groups, advisory councils, and international scientific forums, to facilitate access to relevant European institutions. This allows our experts to stay alert over the latest marine policy developments, monitor implementation processes and influence the development of new emerging policy interventions. In addition, Oceana exercises a highly collaborative approach to engage with different stakeholders, which allows us to build alliances and targeted partnerships to achieve the anticipated result.
Oceana works through multiyear science-based campaign plans, that are designed to achieve measurable change with fixed deadlines and articulated goals. Our primary focus is to tackle the lack of suitable implementation and enforcement of current laws and regulations, the loopholes that prevent their effective application, as well as seeking new interventions when deemed necessary.
The Levine Family Foundation is supporting Oceana's work to achieve sustainable fisheries in European waters. To deliver this, Oceana will focus on the following goals:
- To defend the Common Fisheries Policy, so that the progress achieved to date is maintained and fish stocks are exploited at sustainable management levels.
- To ensure that EU commercial stocks, including stocks shared with the UK, are fished at sustainable management levels, through participation in the Total Allowable Catch negotiations happening at the end of 2023. The work will focus on severely overexploited stocks and forage fish stocks which are key to ecosystems.
- To lobby EU institutions to adopt legislation that delivers low impact fisheries and prioritises climate action.
- To ensure that the EU reduces the fishing effort in the Western Mediterranean by more than 30% compared to 2019. This will lead to at least 40% of stocks in the Western Mediterranean Plan being sustainably exploited.
If you would like more information about Oceana, please visit Home | Oceana Europe.
