Fishing for herring and sprat in the central Baltic Sea can increase by 139 percent, according to ICES, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, which today published its recommendations to the EU for fishing in 2025.
The EU fisheries ministers have in a compromise agreed on this years herring fishing in the Baltic Sea next year. As usual, we can continue to fish, despite the fact that, according to many observers, the herring are running out. But there is one law that the ministers seem to forgotten about, which could lead to them having to tear up this year's compromise. Paragraph 4.6 of the EU's multi-year management plan for the Baltic Sea (MAP).
Targeted fishing for herring and sturgeon can also continue in 2024. The EU countries have agreed on significantly larger catch quotas than what the European Commission wanted to see.
The New Economics Foundation think tank was able to show in a report already in 2019 that EU countries took 300,000 tons more fish into the sea than the researchers in ICES recommended.
A small crowd has gathered at the edge of Rönne å in Skåne to participate in the annual eel release. Almost a million eels are released all over Sweden every year, to compensate for the fact that they cannot get past the expanded power plants by themselves.
Herring fishing in the Baltic Sea should shrink sharply next year, according to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). The stock is at levels close to or below what is considered sustainable.
"Don’t catch any eels at all” say the scientists, if you want to have any eels left in the future. But according to Sofia Brockmark at the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (HaV), very few people fish for eel in Sweden and they don’t catch very many.
From 1 January this year, fishing quotas have been reintroduced for spin dogfish, and it is also covered by the discard ban, known as the landing obligation. However, the Swedish Species Information Centre still lists the spiny dogfish as acutely endangered and on the red list. Däremot listar Artdatabasen fortfarande pigghajen som akut hotad och rödlistad.
