The
Cod
situation In the Baltic Sea.
(Lennart
is now living in
Today there are about 80.000 tons of mature cod in the Baltic. According to the
scientists there should be about 240.000 ton of mature cod old enough to spawn
for the Baltic to be back in balance where cod is the dominant predator. The
last few years the states around the Baltic have agreed to accept quotas of
60.000 ton. That means that 60-70 % of the mature cod is killed every year!!!
About 25% of all fish caught by trawlers are dumped back in the sea dead. 60%
of all fish caught in trawlers is uses as feed for chicken and mink.
If one would stop trawling for cod for just a few years the cod population would
have a chance to recover to the minimum level of 240.000 ton mature fish. This
is still far away from the normal level of the 1980s of 700.000 ton mature fish.
STILL THE POLITICIANS IN EU CANNOT AGREE TO DO ANYTHING!
They listen more to the commercial fishermen than the scientists, who have the
facts.
In the Baltic the cod was the main predator. The main prey was small herring (skarpsill).
Now this small herring is exploding in the Baltic. Its main feed is zoo
plankton. The zoo plankton’s main feed is bio plankton (algae), so now some
areas of the Baltic is so full of algae that you cannot swim there in the
summer. The zoo plankton is also the main feed for both pike and perch, so they
do not have enough food to survive. Result less pike and perch for sport
fishermen to catch.
The commercial fishing in all the world has gone down by 70-90 % since 1950 when
the so called industrial fishing started. This according to the scientific
studies reported by the magazine NATURE in
May
2003.
The fact that the cod fishing has been destroyed first at Grand Banks (which
used to have the finest cod fishing in the world) and now both in the North Sea
and the Baltic has made it interesting for European commercial fishermen (mainly
from Spain) to buy the rights to trawl off the coast of Africa. So now the local
poor fishermen who used to go out in small boats to easily catch fish to feed
the family, cannot catch enough to survive. The spawning grounds for all fish as
well as the coral have been destroyed by bottom trawlers.
The problem is not only the Baltic, but one would think that the countries
surrounding this small sea would be able to agree to save its future. Why should
countries, which are not even close to this Sea, be allowed to vote against a
total stop industrial fishing in this sensitive water. Particularly as the
Baltic cod is a special genetic kind (living and breading in brackish water),
not found anywhere else in the world. This cod can not be replaced, as cod from
saltier water can not spawn in brackish water.
A Swedish reporter,
Isabella Lövin, has written a book in Swedish which has given a lot of
information about this sad situation. Some of the facts that I have mentioned
above are from her book TYST HAV (