Legislation is going through designed to reduce by-catches of cod in Baltic flatfish fisheries. Fishermen have until April next year to adapt to the new standard and will have access to EMFAF support.
All targeted fisheries for cod in the Baltic have been closed, although there remains a by-catch of cod in other fisheries, notably for flatfish. Until the situation improves, fishermen will have to use either a roofless trawl with a section of the upper sheet removed to allow cod out, with codends made in either T90 or square mesh to facilitate by-catch escape.
The objective of the new rules is to reduce the incidental catches of cod by at least 55% in ICES subdivisions 22-26.
Although the European Commission accepts that fisheries are only one of the reasons for this situation, it states that reducing cod catches is indispensable to making the recovery of cod stocks possible.
When fishing for flatfish in ICES subdivisions 22-26, the use of a roofless selection device becomes mandatory together with the current baseline gears or with two new gears that are also more selective – a modified T90 codend and a square mesh codend.
In part of the Western Baltic (ICES subdivision 24) and the South-Eastern Baltic (ICES subdivisions 25 and 26), a modified T90 codend without the roofless selection device.
According to the STECF, the roofless version of trawl gear releases the majority of cod, irrespective of their size. These new, more selective gears were introduced under the regionalisation process of the common fisheries policy and were proposed to the European Commission jointly by the Baltic EU Member States and positively assessed by the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries.
