Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE), an association of 33 organisations in 15 European Union member states, has criticised a proposal set by the European Commission regarding fishing opportunities in the Baltic Sea in 2025.
LIFE called out the proposal as being "incomprehensible and not fit for purpose," claiming that scientists provided advice for 2025 based on averaging data for the last three years instead of using a much longer time series. In the case of the Gulf of Bothnia herring, this was used by the commission to propose a 21 per cent quota increase resulting in catches over 66,000 tonnes.
LIFE said that, coming at a time when this stock of herring is at record low levels and with quota in recent years not having been fully utilised, there is a strong indication that scientists are once again overestimating stock biomass levels.
The supposed scientific error was highlighted by Dr Rainer Froese from the GEOMAR Institute at LIFE’s June event on the emergency situation in the Baltic Sea. Dr Froese pointed out that year on year, scientists from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) had estimated stock biomass too high, resulting in fishing limits being set too high.
In particular, the proposed herring quota caused shock and consternation amongst LIFE’s Baltic members and many other small-scale fishers in the region. Swedish MEPs in the PECH Committee meeting in Brussels held recently had a similar reaction.
LIFE said that had the ICES scientists used the entire time series with 60 years of data, they would have based their recommendation on a fishing mortality value of 0.068, resulting in a quota of around 28,000 tonnes. However, they dismissed this result from the model as "implausibly low and not in line with the history of the stock."
"No evidence or explanation was provided for this dismissal and it is our opinion that the Fmsy estimate value of 0.068, which is based on the whole data series, is more reliable than the value proposed in the advice (0.218),” said Christian Tsangarides, LIFE’s Coordinator for the Baltic and North Sea.
In LIFE’s view, the proposal undermines the achievement of the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) objective as outlined in the Common Fisheries Policy Article 2.2. Also, the association claims the proposal inhibits biomass growth in the Bothnian herring stock and will hasten the collapse of the Swedish surströmming industry.
LIFE added that neither salmon nor seals are mentioned at all in either the working group report or the advice sheet for Bothnian herring. The association said these three species are clearly interconnected and for there to be no mention at all of this is an oversight that needs to be corrected by adopting a multispecies approach.
LIFE said this proposal will, by allowing increased fishing on their prey species, have the effect of limiting the food supply available for salmon populations and further inhibiting their recovery.
The association therefore calls for an immediate revision of this proposal and for fishing limits to be reset in line with a more precautionary MSY, allowing the stock to stabilise in the long-term at a spawning stock biomass of significantly more than one million tonnes, in line with the history of the stock.