Bemærk: Ved udskrivning af denne side skal printer opsættes til "landskab"

Memorandum  

The Danish Society for a Living Sea.

August 2003

Porpoise and driftnets in the Baltic Sea

The EU commission has presented a suggestion, 2003/0163 (CNS), for a limitation of 2.5 km of driftnets per vessel in the Baltic Sea. If this proposal will be carried through, it will de facto imply the end of commercial salmon fisheries with driftnets in the Baltic Sea. The proposal also contains a total prohibition of the use of driftnets in the Baltic Sea from 2007.

The EU Commission at the same time suggests that all other types of gillnets (i.e. nets which are placed on the bottom to catch cod, flatfish, pike, etc.) in the Baltic Sea and the ICES areas III B, C and D, must have acoustic alarm devices mounted on them throughout the year, in order to prevent porpoises and dolphins from being caught in the nets.

The Danish Society for a Living Sea has dealt with porpoise for many years. As fishermen, we have caught porpoise, we have been preoccupied with the problem of by-catches of porpoise, and we have during recent years, each summer, systematically observed, studied and counted porpoise in the Danish waters. On the basis of this, we believe there are very compelling reasons to reconsider the relevance and consequences of the mentioned proposal. The purpose with this memorandum from Living Sea is to create greater clarity on this matter, especially considering that the proposal in its calculations of consequences does not consider that the fishery with nets in the Baltic Sea and the areas III B and III C must be prohibited, if the aims of the proposal are to be fulfilled. We therefore encourage all responsible actors, including not the least national authorities, to consider the following.

Two important questions have not been clarified:

1. Is there in 2003 a stock of porpoise in the Baltic Sea, which can be saved/rebuild by limiting the fishery?
2. Can the driftnets applied for salmon fishing in the Baltic Sea catch porpoise at all?

Ad1. Some seem to believe that there were 10-20,000 porpoises in the Baltic Sea around 1900, and that there were 600 in 1995. This is based on estimations and counts from the early 1990s, which all deserve closer scrutiny. First questions: How long does the Baltic Sea extend into inner Danish waters? In which areas were the porpoise from the early 1990s observed, and how were they observed?

Ad2. If the effort was made to study the driftnets applied in the Baltic Sea, even a child would be able to understand that if a porpoise should get caught in the driftnets, it would still be able to breathe. And since the nets are only staying in the water for a couple of hours, the fishermen would be able to free the porpoise, while it is still alive. There exists substantial knowledge on the by-catches in the North Sea, and here the fishermen have no doubts about this description. But neither in the Baltic Sea do we have concrete reports or recent information about a by-catch of porpoise in the driftnets applied for salmon fishing on open sea. The Danish salmon fishermen do in fact deny any knowledge of by-catches of porpoise in the driftnets. The concrete references of by-catches are from Sweden. But these can impossibly be by-catches in driftnets, since the fishing is said to have been conducted close at shore in a depth of 0-10 meters.

Review

Initially, it should be made clear that the Danish Society for a Living Sea is an environmental organisation, i.e. an NGO, which like other environmental organisations is working for the benefit of a clean sea and a more sustainable exploitation of the marine resources, i.e. a more sustainable fishery. When we involve ourselves in a case like this, it happens on a fishery professional basis, in accordance with the reality, in which the fishery takes place.

We realize and to some extent accept that fishing does have negative consequences in the nature, from which it depends. In Living Sea we also accept that birds, seals, and porpoise are caught as unintended by-catches in the fishery. But we do not accept any catches or by-catches, which threaten the individual stocks or the marine ecosystem. That means that the fishery should aim at the highest degree of biological and ecological sustainability.

Living Sea has no other agenda than to improve the marine environment and a more sustainable exploitation of the resources, and it is therefore paramount to us that the rules, legislations and limitations, which fishery should apply to today and in the future, must be logical and relevant to the problems imposed by the fishery on the marine ecosystem, the habitats, and the commercially overexploited fish stocks. When laws and regulations lose the logical foundation and not the least the relevance, the authorities as well as interests outside the fishery lose influence to promote a more sustainable fishing in the future fishery.

-         In this case about the by-catches of porpoise in the Baltic Sea, everyone should hence be attentive to the fact that a prohibition of driftnets is not founded on the actual state of affairs, and that an implementation of the proposal would therefore imply more damage than benefit.

Below we state the reasons given by Living Sea why the EU commission should withdraw the proposal in order to clarify a number of issues.

·        As soon as possible, a document should be worked out, which with specific and concrete references gives documentation of the existence of a stock of breeding porpoise in the Baltic Sea, in the part of III D, which lies East of Bornholm. If such a stock exists, how big is it, and where is it situated?

·        As soon as possible, a document should be worked out, which with specific and concrete references gives documentation of the fact or the likeliness that the driftnets applied for salmon fishing in the Baltic Sea, can catch porpoise and dolphins.

·        As soon as possible, a document should be worked out, which gives documentation of known by-catches in driftnets and in ordinary nets. How many have been caught during the past decade, in which types of nets, and where?

The proposal in relation to the reality in the sea and in the fishery

We have not been able to find anywhere any confirmation of just a single caught porpoise in the gillnets of Danish fishermen (i.e. driftnets as well as ordinary) in the Baltic Sea. By this of course, we do not intend to claim that no single porpoise has actually been caught by Danish fishermen in the Baltic Sea, because we do not know this for a fact, but we have not been able to get any confirmation of actual catches.

The undersigned, chairman of Living Sea, has conducted fishery with own vessel, applying gillnets in the Baltic Sea from 1981-1989. “I have never seen a porpoise or any other whale/dolphin in the Baltic Sea. In the period mentioned, I have never heard of any colleague, who had caught a porpoise. (In the 1980s, as it is well known, there was a very intensive cod fishery in the Baltic Sea, and the nets, which I and others applied, were high nets, which were used all year, and placed on stone grounds and edges. Under similar circumstances in the North Sea, I did in fact catch porpoise.)”

The older fishermen on Bornholm tell that there were porpoises in the Baltic Sea in the period between the two World Wars, but following the very hard ice winters of 1939, 1940, and 1941, they disappeared. They also tell that when the ice broke up, and trawling was started up again, the trawlers caught a lot of dead porpoises in their trawls.

Swedish and Polish information on by-catches should be analyzed in order to achieve clarity about the types of tackle the porpoise has been caught in.

The proposal in relation to the logic it represents

If you disregard the reality in the sea and in the fishery, and focus exclusively on the logic of the prohibition of driftnets, which the proposal presents, the following considerations apply.

Everyone outside the fishery seems to agree that there exists a stock of porpoise in the Baltic Sea. Evidently this stock is of a small size. Numbers of 100 individuals are mentioned many places, and hence a by-catch of 2 porpoises will be too much, since the allowed by-catches cannot exceed 1.7 %. If the proposal aims at saving this stock (with consideration of the fact that the EU commission operates with a by-catch of 5-6 porpoises), it logically follows that all fishery with gillnets (i.e. the more than 100,000 nets of all kinds, which are used for catching cod, flounder, pike, herring, etc. by anything from spare time fishermen to larger commercial vessels) in the Baltic Sea, should be prohibited. Acoustic alarm devices only lower the by-catches, they do not provide a 100 % guarantee, which (on the basis of the premises of the proposal) makes violation of the maximum of 1 porpoise as by-catch very realistic. To this it can be added that drifting trawl for catching cod, herring, and sprat should then also be prohibited.

The proposal to mount acoustic alarm devices on all gillnets in the Baltic Sea and the inner Danish waters, also raises the question of the economic reality connected to it. The EU commission writes that they imagine that the fishermen could apply for means in the EU for the purpose (of mounting devices). But this only alters the economic consequences of the proposal to the individual fisherman very little. The question remains, whether we as a society can defend spending the suggested amounts of resources for the attempt at saving a stock of porpoises, which might exist in the Baltic Sea.

There is another logical problem in the question of acoustic alarm devices and driftnets. If acoustic alarm devices are effective, why should driftnets then be prohibited, when they like any other type of gillnet might have the devices mounted – in this case on the bottom line?

Finally, we also encourage everyone to consider the following carefully. If it is true that there today exist no more than the ca. 100 porpoises in the Baltic Sea (subtracted the ICES areas III B and III C), it raises the question whether this stock can be saved at all. Apparently, there were 10-20,000 porpoises in said area in 1900, and 600 in the early 1990s, and this stock should now have been reduced to an estimated 100 individuals. If this is true, it cannot possibly be the fishery, which has caused this dramatic set back. No one can question the fact that there today exists a significant stock of porpoise in the inner Danish waters, as well as in the North Sea, where a significantly more intensive gillnet fishing has been conducted, than in the Baltic Sea in the period, when the porpoise has disappeared. The questions arises naturally: Can we possibly defend that the basis of the livelihood for  thousands of fishermen, catching fish in the nine countries around the Baltic Sea, is removed, in the attempt to maintain a stock of porpoise, which apparently does not want to be in the Baltic Sea?

In Living Sea, we are very critical to this proposal, and to this criticism we would like to attach the following closing remarks. As described, the proposal in our view lacks relevance and logic, but also principles are at stake in this matter.

We have learned that it is the major European environmental organisations, which have been able to insist that this proposal be made. They have insisted that a proposal be carried through in the EU commission, which will take away the livelihood of the fishermen, who apply driftnets in the Baltic Sea. And they are about to get a proposal carried through, which will have massive practical and economic consequences to thousands of fishermen, for if the regulation will be passed, it will cause significant problems to the few larger, and very many smaller industrial fishermen, and even more part time, and spare time, fishermen, who now have to purchase acoustic alarm devices, when they apply only 300 meters of nets of any type for any kind of fishing.

We believe that when you consider removing the basis of employment from a large amount of people, you must present documentation, which justifies such measures. An explanation, we have consistently heard from the environmental organisations is: “Yes, it is true that we know too little about porpoise and by-catches, but this is not our mistake, but the fishermen’s”. The organisations are perhaps not angry, but obviously frustrated that the fishery trade and the European fishery industry, do not wish to have a constructive dialogue with the environmental organisations on the question of a more sustainable fishery, in the areas of fishing methods, fish stocks, as well as of the by-catches of marine mammals.

But here we cannot join in. When we engage ourselves in this question, and thereby are likely to lose goodwill among the major environmental organisations, it is inextricably connected to the fact that the proposal damages the gentle and sustainable fishery, and at the same time takes away the focus from the nature- and resource damaging fishery, the consequences of which everyone should work to diminish. (In Living Sea we are convinced that that nature- and resource damaging fishery is must more interested in discussing the current issue, than for instance more substantial matters such as big scale industrial fishing, discard, and collapsing fish stocks.)

The Danish Society for a Living Sea is available and willing to provide the necessary equipment and competent people to conduct an investigation of the porpoises and the fishery in the Baltic Sea. Such an investigation might be conducted by applying the M/S Anton (the Living Sea project ship) with the right crew to cover the whole area of the Baltic Sea and establish the actual state of affairs in the question of driftnets and specifically the by-catches from this and all other types of gillnets. If the EU commission is willing to finance such a project, we will as soon as possible work out a project description with a budget, for the purpose.

Kurt Bertelsen Christensen

Chairman of The Danish Society For a Living Sea

Ferring Strand, Sep. 2^nd, 2003.

ref.

• REPORT Brussel 2002. Report of the second meeting… STECF “Incidental catches of small Cetaceans
• Action Plan for Reducing Incidental Bycatches of Habour Porpoises. DK 1998
• Report: SMALL CETACEAN BY-CATCH IN FISHERIES ICES 2002
• Proposal for a COUNCIL REGULATION: laying down measures concerning incidental catches of cetaceans in fisheries and amending Regulation (EC) No 88/98
• Bycatches of harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) in Danish set-net fisheries 1999
• Interim report: “Foreløbig resultater fra monitering af garnfiskeri, hvor der anvendes akustiske alarmer” ja. 2001
• Reviews and statements from the Danish Society For a Living Sea: http://gl.levendehav.dk/politik/enkeltsager/marsvin/indeks.marsvin.html