Total marine fisheries extractions by country in the Baltic Sea

Total marine fisheries extractions by country in the Baltic Sea: 1950-present, Rossing, Booth and Zeller 9
territorial sea, which later increased to 12 nm. In 1978, Sweden became the first country in the Baltic to
claim a 200 nm Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) under the provisions of the United Nations Law of the
Sea (UNCLOS), but because of overlapping claims, the mid-line principle was used to settle claims. The
changes brought about by the introduction of EEZs during the later part of the 1970s had the effect of
shrinking the fishing areas of some countries (e.g., Denmark; Borberg, 1976). However, with the adoption
of the Common Fisheries Policy by members of the EU in 1983, fishing fleets of member countries had
access to each other‘s fishing areas (outside of the 12 nm territorial waters, unless fishery access
agreements between individual countries were established). With EU membership expanding since 1983,
more area of the Baltic Sea has come under EU management.
The officially reported fisheries data, as represented by ICES sources, are known to almost exclusively
account for landings, not total catches. ICES stock assessment working group reports do provide some
information and data on unallocated (unreported) catches and discards for some species, but
unfortunately not in a transparent manner. The unallocated (unreported) catches from working group
reports are presented as Baltic Sea-wide total amounts, and not by country, even though it is known that
not all countries report these catches. Unfortunately, the default approach by the working groups is to
substitute ‗zero‘ for those countries not presenting data for unallocated catches. This approach leads to
under-estimation in this catch categories because there is no expansion (or substitution with estimates)
methods used to account for countries not reporting. Further, the working group reports do not indicate
which countries‘ data are included. This incomplete accounting in scientific stock assessment reports is
apparently done for confidentiality reasons, but does not lead to a transparent and publicly accountable
catch accounting system. It also hampers attempts to comprehensively assess the true nature of fisheries
catches. Yet, to fully account for all catches, estimates of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated catches
(IUU), discards and recreational catches need to be assessed and included to better estimate likely total
fisheries catches in the Baltic Sea. A further data source, presently called ‗Fishframe‘ (FishFrame, 2009)
that contains information on discards by gear type, species, country and year, as well as some data on
unallocated catches is available to authorized users. However, these data are also considered confidential,
and access to these data was not given. This database is maintained by Denmark‘s National Institute of
Aquatic Resources (DTU Aqua).
Additional data sources used include national data, published and grey literature case studies,
unpublished reports, media sources and personal information based on communications and discussions
with country- and region-specific experts from around the Baltic Sea region. Interestingly, many of the
personal sources were very willing and keen to share their knowledge and information with us, but have
expressed a clear preference for not being named, i.e., wanting to remain anonymous, usually out of
concern about their perceived scientific standing, or concerns about their job security. Throughout this
report, we treat such concerns seriously, and cite ‗anonymous source‘ for such material. We also endeavor
to use such information in a manner so as not to make the original source apparent. However, the
scientific and public community in Europe should consider it as a point of concern if scientists,
environmental and fisheries experts are not willing to speak publicly on their knowledge and experience.
The approach to retroactively estimate total catches uses a bottom-up approach to reconstruct catch time
series (Zeller et al., 2007; Pauly et al., 2008). Such an approach often requires assumption-based
inferences and interpolations, but is justified, despite data uncertainties, given the less acceptable
alternatives that users of official data will interpret non-reported or missing data components as zero
catches (Pauly et al., 1998). Estimates of total catches derived from catch reconstructions will clearly not
be statistically ‗precise‘ in the sense of having small uncertainty. However, of importance here is the
realization that, given our conservative approach to estimation, the estimates that will be derived are ‗less
wrong‘ i.e., likely more ‗accurate‘ in the sense of being closer to the ‗true‘ value than the currently assumed
‗zero‘ catch substituted for ‗no data‘ by stock assessments.
The rational for fisheries catch reconstruction lies in creating a baseline of total catches rather than
reported landings to better inform policy makers and the general public, and to contribute to the
development of ecosystem-based fisheries management, which cannot be done without a comprehensive
time-series of fisheries catches. It is hoped that by casting the net wide, and not relying on one set of data,
that a better and more comprehensive picture will emerge on the likely total catches taken in the Baltic Sea
over the last 50+ years.