Baltic Sea (Central) - Exploitation

The main commercially targeted species are cod Gadus morhua callarias, herring Clupea harengus membras and sprat Sprattus sprattus. They constitute about 95 % of the total catch. The main fisheries for cod in the Baltic use demersal trawls, pelagic trawls and gillnets. The importance of longlines has increased in later years, in general at the expense of the gillnet fishery. Pelagic trawlers, catching a mixture of herring and sprat, dominate pelagic fisheries in the Baltic. To a minor extent, a predominantly herring fishery is carried out with trap-nets/pound-nets and gill nets in coastal areas as well as with bottom trawls. While feeding in the sea, salmon Salmo salar are caught by drift nets and long lines and during the spawning run they are caught along the coast, mainly in trap nets and fixed gillnets. The coastal fishery targets a variety of species (in addition to herring, cod and salmon e.g., eel Anguilla anguilla, perch Perca fluviatilis, pikeperch Stizostedion lucioperca, whitefish Coregonus lavaretus, flounder Platichthys flesus) with a mixture of gears including fixed gears (e.g. gill, pound and trap nets, and weirs) and Danish seines. The fishery is conducted along the entire Baltic coastline (ICES 2011)

In recent decades, the commercial fish community changed from cod – to sprat-dominated. The cod stock collapsed due to climate-induced recruitment failure and continuously high fishing pressure (Köster et al. 2005). Meanwhile, the sprat stock increased to record levels during the 1990s, as a result of climate-induced recruitment success and lower predation pressure by cod (Köster et al. 2003, MacKenzie and Köster 2004). Herring biomass decreased mainly due to reduced growth (Möllmann et al. 2005), but also lower recruitment.