The Russian shadow fleet is a hot topic as the ten countries in the UK-led defence partnership JEF meet in Helsinki. ‘The shadow fleet must be tackled more rigorously,’ says British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as the meeting begins.
Keep Sweden Tidy has been working with various partners in Finland and Estonia to remove abandoned fishing gear from the Baltic Sea. At the same time, it has been raising awareness of the problem of ghost nets, amongst other things, among recreational anglers and the general public. Over the three years the project has been running, nearly 9,000 metres of ghost nets and over two tonnes of lost fishing gear have been retrieved from the sea.
The ship Fitburg, which was seized by Finnish police last week, will be escorted out of Finland into international waters on Monday, according to the National Bureau of Investigation.
Finland märker ingen minskning av rysk oljeexport genom Östersjön. Däremot har riskerna ökat när skeppen i ”skuggflottan” blir allt skraltigare, och sjönavigation störs ut i den trånga Finska viken. - Det värsta scenariot vore en kollision med en fullsatt Finlandsfärja, säger kommodor Mikko Simola ombord på bevakningsfartyget Turva.
Sweden, Finland, and Norway conduct hunting for seals as trophy hunting. In most other countries, hunting of large marine mammals has been prohibited. In the USA, they have even banned the import of fish from countries that kill marine mammals to protect their fishing industry. Sweden doesn't have much fish to export, so that import ban is unlikely to affect us significantly. However, we hunt a large marine mammal – and that is unique.
Healthy habitats with a diversity of species are important, not least for us to cope with a rapidly changing climate. We have been to the Finnish side of the Baltic Sea and talked to one of the world's leading marine scientists; Alf Norkko.
