Total marine fisheries extractions by country in the Baltic Sea

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Total marine fisheries extractions by country in the Baltic Sea: 1950-present, Rossing, Booth and Zeller 7
FISHERIES CATCHES FROM THE BALTIC SEA LARGE MARINE ECOSYSTEM:
1950-2007 1
Dirk Zeller, Shawn Booth, Sarah Bale, Peter Rossing, Sarah Harper and Daniel Pauly
Sea Around Us Project, Fisheries Centre
University of British Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC., V6T 1Z4, Canada; email:
d.zeller@fisheries.ubc.ca; s.booth@fisheries.ubc.ca; s.bale@fisheries.ubc.ca; p.rossing@fisheries.ubc.ca;
s.harper@fisheries.ubc.ca; d.pauly@fisheries.ubc.ca
ABSTRACT
We estimated the total marine and brackish-water fisheries catches from the Baltic Sea Large Marine
Ecosystem, from 1950-2007, taken by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
Russia and Sweden. Using the ICES electronic catch database as the ‗reported data‘ baseline, we added
several IUU (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated) catch components: ‗adjustments‘ (data source
adjustments to the reported landings), ‗unreported‘ landings (termed ‗unallocated‘ by ICES), estimates of
‗discards‘, and estimates of ‗recreational catches‘. This ‗reconstructed total catch‘ was 53.5 million tonnes
from 1950-2007, which is approximately 30% higher than landings officially reported by ICES for the
same period. For the period since 2000 (2000-2007) this difference was 35%. Our reconstruction is likely
an underestimate, as we used minimum values based on conservative assumptions. However, a
conservative estimate is still preferable to the current default assumption of ‗zero catch‘ in the absence of
officially-reported IUU data. Currently, ICES does not disclose countries that do or do not submit
estimates of these other fisheries sectors to ICES, and this lack of transparency prevents countries that are
either not collecting or not reporting data from being held accountable by the public and other
stakeholders on issues of public resource use.
INTRODUCTION
The Baltic Sea, here defined as the Baltic Sea Large
Marine Ecosystem (Figure 1; Sherman and
Hempel, 2008), is a semi-enclosed sea situated in
northern Europe and encompasses a surface area
of approximately 394,000 km 2
(www.seaaroundus.org). Nine coastal countries
(Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden) surround
the Baltic Sea and are involved in national,
regional and international agencies to manage the
sea and its resources. The Baltic Sea is a water
body that consists of brackish water with large
inputs of fresh water originating from rivers in the
east and inputs of more saline water entering from
the Atlantic Ocean through the Kattegat. The Baltic
Sea is therefore often thought of as a large semienclosed
estuary (Graneli et al., 1990). The
watersheds‘ catchment encompasses an area
approximately 4 times the surface area of the Baltic
Sea (Thulin and Andrushaitis, 2003). The
terrestrial landscape surrounding the Baltic Sea
has a variety of human impacts that also influence
Denmark
22
23
Germany
Sweden
24
25
27
30
26
Poland
28-2
Figure 1. Map of the Baltic Sea with ICES subdivisions
and surrounding countries (the Baltic Sea Large Marine
Ecosystem consists of all subdivisions indicated).
29
RF
31
28-1
Finland
Latvia
Lithuania
32
Estonia
Russian
Federation
(RF)
0 200 400 Km
N
1 Cite as: Zeller, D., Booth, S., Bale, S., Rossing, P., Harper, S., and Pauly, D. (2010) Fisheries catches from the Baltic Sea Large
Marine Ecosystem: 1950-2007. pp. 7-38. In: Rossing, P., Booth, S., and Zeller, D. (eds.), Total marine fisheries extractions by
country in the Baltic Sea: 1950-present. Fisheries Centre Research Reports 18 (1). Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia,
Canada [ISSN 1198-6727].