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 17
discard for cod, dab, flounder, plaice (Pleuronectes platessa), whiting (Merlangius merlangus), thorny
skate (Amblyraja radiate) and ‗others‘. We transformed the discard tonnage for each specific taxon into a
rate by considering the amount of discards as a proportion of the reported landings for the respective taxa.
The discard rates for herring and sprat were assumed to be zero as boat-based discards is considered to be
almost non-existent in fisheries targeting these species (ICES 2009). The discard rates for dab (33.4%),
flounder (48.0%), and plaice (34.0%) were averaged and applied to both brill and turbot (38.5%). The
discard rate for whiting (36.1%) was used solely for this species, while the reported discard amount of
thorny skate was pooled with other taxa and formed the basis of the discard rate (6.2%) for all taxa that
did not have species specific discard data. For western countries, the data from the Danish DTU study was
used unaltered for the entire time period (1950-2007). For eastern bloc countries the assumed default
discard rate of 2 % was held constant until 1990 and then was linearly interpolated to the derived rates,
which we set for 1993 to remain consistent with our methodology for eastern bloc countries.
Recreational catches
Unregulated catches are predominantly represented here by recreational fisheries. Recreational catch
estimates were made for all western countries and Russia back to 1950. In Poland, recreational fisheries of
cod were known to start in 1986 (Radtke and Dabrowski, 2007). For the former East Germany and the
remaining former eastern bloc countries (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) recreational catch estimates were
not made until they became market economies, as their previous legal framework did not permit
recreational fishing (R. Oeberst, pers. comm., Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut). As some type of
information or data were available for nearly all countries, details for each country‘s approach to estimate
recreational catches are given in each specific report (this volume).
RESULTS
We present reconstructed catch data for the total marine fisheries catches in the Baltic Sea Large Marine
Ecosystem (LME) for the period from 1950 to 2007. Our reconstruction used landings statistics reported
to ICES on behalf of 9 coastal countries (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
Russia, and Sweden) as baseline data. Estimates of IUU catches were comprised of: a) adjustments to
reported landings; b) unreported landings; c) discards; and d) recreational catches. We also present
landings data reported by non-Baltic countries as pertaining to the Baltic Sea. See Appendix Tables (B1-
B7) for complete time series data.
ICES landings statistics
For the period 1950 to 2007,
ICES reports a total of
approximately 41.3 million t
in the ICES ‗landings
statistics‘ for the nine
countries fishing in the Baltic
Sea LME (including the
former USSR and five non-
Baltic countries; Figure 2,
Table 9). Fisheries landings
for non-Baltic countries
Table 9. Total ICES landing statistics (t) by decade including non-Baltic
countries, for each of the taxonomic entities considered.
Common
name
1950-
1959
1960-
1969
1970-
1979
1980-
1989
1990-
1999
2000-
2007
Cod 1,086,642 1,630,235 2,087,633 3,218,265 1,128,696 627,149
Herring 1,351,129 2,422,444 3,902,019 4,224,589 3,478,612 2,179,34
Sprat 135,873 781,259 1,817,317 642,655 3,019,670 3,007,36 8
Flatfishes 99,261 206,473 208,250 160,845 167,927 178,079 0
Salmon 20,227 30,743 27,385 31,155 32,716 11,890
‘Others’ 449,022 697,882 844,611 487,735 481,212 433,642
totaled approximately 64,000 t for the time period 1950 to 2007. We chose to exclude these landings from
our catch reconstruction due to their low tonnage.
All landings reported from the Baltic Sea LME were reported from ICES subdivisions 22-32, which
includes the transition zone in Denmark (subdivisions 22-25) and the Baltic Sea proper (subdivisions 24-
32; Figure 1).Reported landings increased from approximately 168,000 t∙year -1 in 1950 to around 950,000
t∙year -1 during the late 1970s and mid 1980s, before declining to about 615,000 t∙year -1 in 1991 (Figure 2).