Report of the Annual Meeting between RACs and ICES (MIRAC)

The Director of the Directorate ‘Animal Food Production and Animal Welfare’ in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, Henri Kool, welcomed MIRAC to The Hague and the new Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation by invitation of the Pelagic RAC. He underlined that cooperation between scientists, fishermen and NGOs leads to better policy. He noted that understanding has improved, not only because the parties are meeting each other, going out to sea together and learning of each other’s work, that more information is collected on fishing boats and that transparency in ICES is a good step forward. He insisted that good cooperation is needed in 2012 as there are many challenges, particularly with the revision of the Common Fisheries Policy. He expected that the focus of scientific work would be on developing and evaluating long-term management plans.