October 6, 2025

Atlantic mackerel quotas slashed as 2026 catch cuts issued

Chris Chase

Guest Author:

Atlantic makerel. Photo courtesy of Maine Coast Fishermen's Association

The International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) is recommending big cuts to quotas of pelagic species in the Northeast Atlantic, continuing a downward trend amid continued overfishing.

ICES recommended the blue whiting catch in the Northeast Atlantic should be dropped to no more than 1.88 billion pounds (851,344 MT) in 2026, a 41 percent decrease from the 3.20 billion pounds (1.45 million MT) quota it recommended for 2025. The drop for Northeast Atlantic mackerel was even more severe, with ICES recommending a nearly 70 percent drop from the 1.27 billion pounds (576,958 MT) recommended for the 2025 season to a quota of just 384 million pounds (174,357 MT) in 2026.

According to ICES, mackerel recruitment has continued to remain low, and fishing pressure has continued to remain above the maximum sustainable yield of the species. The decline in the stock size is the main reason for the big decrease in the recommended quota, despite changes to ICES modeling.

ICES said it benchmarked the stock in 2025 and made several changes, including new age-varying natural mortality, the use of radio-frequency identification data, and a shorter assessment period. ICES said that resulted in an upward revision in the estimated stock size and a downward revision in fishing mortality.

Read more on Seafood Source. This article is shared with permission.

Chris Chase

Chris Chase is the Portland, Maine-based executive editor of SeafoodSource. Previously, he worked covering local issues at the Coastal Journal in Bath, Maine, where he won multiple awards from the Maine Press Association for his news coverage and food reviews. Chris is a graduate of the University of Maine, and got his start in writing by serving as a reporter and later the State Editor of The Maine Campus, an award-winning campus newspaper.