The EU Commission plans to completely ban herring-targeted fishing in Finland and the surrounding area, because the Commission suspects that herring fishing will threaten the herring population in the future by decreasing the population even more. The number of herring in the Gulf of Bothnia (the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea) has fallen below population amount considered sustainable, and without restrictions the its number would probably decrease even more next year, the Commission reasons in their press release.
So, the Commission proposed last Monday that, in next year’s Baltic Sea fishing quotas, herring-targeted fishing would be completely banned in the waters near Finland so that herrings can be saved from population decline and possible extinction. According to the commission, if restrictive measures were not taken now, the same could happen to the herring in the Gulf of Bothnia as it did to the cod in the eastern Baltic Sea and many salmon stocks, whose stocks have collapsed sharply, causing extensive economic effects for coastal fishermen and communities.
The reception of the proposed ban wasn’t warm, as Finland’s domestic fish industry relies heavily on herring fishing after the late 1990s and the early 2000s reduction of the vendace fishing in the inland waters. In Finland, the EU’s proposal to ban herring fishing is considered unreasonable and also endangers the supply of domestic fish in Finland and the business of many remaining fishing boats and fishmongers. Fishing entrepreneurs and their union also see the ban as an overreaction because it is a much stricter limitation than what scientists of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) have recommended. ICES proposed only 20-40 percent quota cuts for herring fishing for next year and not a total ban.
The only thing Finland can do now to deal with the situation is to wait for the other Baltic Sea countries’ response to the EU’s proposal for a fishing ban.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20047478
https://yle.fi/a/74-20047539
https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000009820708.html
by DaMn96XD