
Our Fisheries Brief has so far focused on the Baltic cod crisis, but we have repeatedly pointed out the need for ecosystem-based management because fish stocks are dependent on and affect one another. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the fisheries policy has failed not only to conserve cod stocks but several other stocks as well.
On Friday 29 May, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which advises on EU fisheries management, presented its recommendation for next year’s fishing quotas for Baltic cod.
At the end of April, the Stockholm newspaper Mitti ran an article about the super trawler Clipperton from the west coast of Sweden, which alone catches 175 times more Baltic herring in the waters off Stockholm County than all the county’s fishermen combined. “This has disastrous consequences for the entire archipelago,” says Henrik C. Andersson, the county’s fisheries advisor.
Researchers at Stockholm University's Baltic Sea Centre have looked at the environmental impact of bottom trawling in the Baltic Sea and recently presented their study at Helcom's conference in Helsinki.