Fishing quotas set to rise significantly – ‘it’s safer to wait’
The EU’s new catch quotas for herring in the Baltic Sea are being significantly increased.
“It would have been safer for the ecosystem to have waited a couple of years before implementing such a large increase,” says Baltic Sea researcher Sara Söderström.
On Monday, EU fisheries ministers decided that catch quotas for herring in the central Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia may increase by 71 per cent and 12 per cent respectively next year.
The new, higher quotas remain within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea’s (ICES) forecast of how much fishing the herring stock can sustain.
However, Sara Söderström, a researcher at the Baltic Sea Centre at Stockholm University, warns that estimates of growth are always uncertain.
ICES anticipates a fairly positive trend in the herring stock, but points out itself that estimates of how many fish are born are always uncertain.
‘It is by no means unusual to see so-called “phantom increases”’, says Söderström.
Called for caution
Ahead of the fisheries ministers’ decision, the European Commission had also proposed lower catch quotas than those decided by the ministers.
‘The Commission explicitly called for caution’, says Söderström.
‘I agree that it would have been safer for the ecosystem, the fish and the fishing industry to have waited a couple of years before implementing such a large increase and to have seen how the stock actually develops.’
Herring is a so-called keystone species in the Baltic Sea and a central part of the ecosystem.
“It is food for many species, it eats a lot, and it transfers both nutrients and energy throughout the entire ecosystem,” says Söderström.
Fishing accounts for a very large proportion of the herring biomass.
Turned into fishmeal
In the Gulf of Riga, they have managed to find a level of fishing that keeps the herring stock stable year after year.
However, the EU’s stock recovery targets for the central Baltic Sea have not yet been met. Many countries fish there, and it is in this area that the catch quota is now being increased by 71 per cent. A small number of larger Swedish fishing vessels operate in the area.
In the Gulf of Bothnia, Sweden and Finland share the catch quota, with Finland receiving 82 per cent.
Herring is fished primarily to be ground into fishmeal, and in Finland a large proportion of this fishmeal is used as feed in fish farms.
Small-scale coastal fishing, where fish are caught to end up on the dinner table, poses no threat to herring, according to Söderström.
Sweden was the only country in the EU Council of Ministers that could have accepted the European Commission’s more cautious increase in catch quotas. In previous years, too, Sweden has been rather alone in its efforts to keep catch quotas down.
