North East Atlantic Mackerel

Last week, Waitrose supermarket, part of the John Lewis Partnership, announced its intention to suspend mackerel sourcing from stocks in the North East Atlantic to ‘take a decisive stand against overfishing to safeguard the long term health and sustainability of our oceans’

At North Atlantic, we share the goal to safeguard the health of our oceans and the sustainability of fish stocks, which is why we adhere precisely to our annual quota allocations and actively support initiatives to improve the monitoring of the highly regulated mackerel fishery.  This is why we volunteered our vessel, Frank Bonefaas, to be the ‘early adopter’ of Remote Electronic Monitoring technology on September 24 as part of a Defra trial.  We also share all our catch data with Cefas to improve the data that underpins stock analysis.

The advice scenarios presented by the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) for 2026 modelled Total Allowable Catch (TAC) reductions of 48% and 70%, along with the associated risks to stock recovery projections.  As a responsible fishing business, we recognise the need for sustainable fisheries management, and we look to national fisheries managers to make balanced and realistic decisions based on the best available science and weighed against the ongoing viability of the UK pelagic fishing and processing sector. The UK has reached an agreement on mackerel fishing with three other Coastal States, Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, with agreed shares and using a 48% reduction in the 2025 TAC (quota) in 2026. This is a very substantial cut-back in mackerel fishing. North Atlantic’s 2026 catch will be based on this agreement.   The mackerel quota allocated to UK fishing businesses set in 2026 is set in accordance with UK quota management rules and reflects the statutory objectives of the Fisheries Act 2020.   

It is imperative that the Coastal States forum, the body responsible for ensuring the sustainable management of NEA fish stocks, deliver an agreement to re-establish national quota shares for all states that fish for mackerel as soon as possible. The void created by the absence of an agreement and the setting of inappropriate, opportunistic and unsustainable unilateral TACs by some States has, inevitably, introduced risk to the sustainable management of the stock. Noting that only a very small proportion of UK mackerel catches are consumed in the UK, the decision by a UK supermarket to take a very healthy product off its shelves will do little to assist in reaching a solution to this international issue.