LITHUANIA
Fisheries control in Lithuania is highly organised
Tight surveillance reduces infringements Fisheries plays an important role in the economies of coastal regions throughout Europe. It is therefore vital to exploit the oceans’ aquatic resources sustainably to avoid the depletion of ďŹ sh stocks, a rusting ďŹ shing eet, unemployed ďŹ shermen and seafood shortages.
O
ne element in ensuring the sustainable use resources is fisheries control, an activity carried out in Lithuania by the Fisheries Service under the Ministry of Agriculture.
Monitoring vessels in the Baltic and on the high seas The Fisheries Service operates a National Fisheries Monitoring Centre where fisheries officers continuously monitor fishing activities of fishing vessels flying the Lithuanian flag as well as fishing vessels of other EU member states within Lithuanian waters. Currently there are 143 fishing vessels in Lithuania’s fishing fleet register. The majority (102) is small vessels, 3 to 14.6 m in length. These vessels only fish in the Lithuanian coastal waters of the Baltic Sea. Another segment of the Lithuanian fishing fleet is the 29 vessels operating in the open waters of the Baltic Sea with an overall length of 23 to 50 m. There are currently 12 fishing vessels ranging between 39 to 136 m in length that operate in high seas (in the Barents, Greenland, Norwegian, and Irminger seas together with the waters of North West, Southwest Atlantic and South Pacific) as well as in the North Sea, the European 34
Eurofish Magazine 4 / 2015
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Western Waters, until recently in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Mauritania, and now in the EEZ of Morocco and Angola. This segment may be the smallest in number, but usually catches are ten times bigger and more, when compared to the Baltic Sea (including the coastal waters fishery) catches. In 2014, 13,761 tonnes of fish of various species were caught in the Baltic Sea (including the catch from coastal waters), most of which (over 70 percent) was sprat. In the same year the high seas catch was 136,990 tonnes of various fish species, the majority of which was small pelagic species, such as sardinella, horse mackerel and Atlantic mackerel. The size of the fishing fleet, its catch and the distance to its fishing areas speaks for itself. A significant effort is put into inspecting fishing vessels of various countries operating in the North West and North East Atlantic. Every year, not less than 5 percent of the landings from third (non EU) countries fishing/transporting vessels are . inspected at the port of Klaipeda, as well as 30 percent of the Baltic Sea catch, which is landed in the territory of Lithuania as well as 5 percent of the fish sold through auction. The Fisheries Service’s fishery officers monitor fishing in the Baltic Sea from the air in
. . Indre Ĺ idlauskiene, Director of the Fisheries Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania
cooperation with the Lithuanian Air Force. The Fisheries Service also cooperates with other control institutions – the State Food and Veterinary Service, State Customs Department, Coast Guard, Navy and others. With its two highspeed fisheries control vessels “Vakaris� and “Tobis�, the Fisheries Service inspects commercial fishery vessels and angler boats in the Baltic Sea. The service also informs the sector about the latest legislative amendments, and provides it with the latest updates of technical measures. Experts from the service also train fishing
vessels’ masters how to properly fill in electronic fishing logbooks.
Advanced electronic registration systems used to share data The service tracks in real time the movements of the fishing vessels at sea and monitor catches by using the satellite vessel monitoring and electronic registry systems. The data on the amount of fish caught and landed, first sales of fisheries products and other related information is automatically transferred into the www.eurofishmagazine.com