POLAND
Association of Sea Fishermen’s PO has a long history
Lack of cod threatens coastal ďŹ shery The Association of Sea Fishermen’s PO, the oldest ďŹ shermen’s association in Poland with a history dating back over 70 years, has 165 members representing both coastal ďŹ shermen and those ďŹ shing with trawlers. The vessels, which number more than the members, amount to a quarter of the total Polish eet.
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bout 50 of the fishermen in an area stretching from Weber to Krynica Morska belong to the Association of Sea Fishermen’s PO. Members have to meet certain criteria including a certain length of time as fishermen, show responsibility, feel comfortable in the fishing environment, and last but not least, be of good moral character.
Skinny cod are a stubborn problem Coastal fishers form between 60 and 75 of the membership of the association. The coastal fleet, which covers vessels up to 12 m, may only use passive gears to fish. The gears can have different shapes, and mesh sizes, and quotas allocated to the vessels determine how much the fishers may catch over the course of the year. In 2018, quotas for the national coastal fleet amounted to 60,000 tonnes of sprat, 12,000 t of cod, 40,000 t of herring, and 6,500 pieces of salmon. Trawlers target the same species but with different gears. Both coastal fishers and trawler fishermen are currently facing problems with the cod fishery in the Eastern Baltic. For several years now, cod have been small and skinny for reasons as yet unknown. Theories abound, ranging from global warming to a lack of exchange of water between the North Sea and the Baltic, parasites on the fish, to overfishing. The fishery which had been certified as 58
Jacek Wittbrodt, Managing Director of the Association of Sea Fishermen’s PO, an organisation with a 70-year-old history.
sustainable had its certification withdrawn in December 2015. Dawid Sztormowski, a white fish processor and fleet owner, who has been fishing for cod since 1999, has observed the change in the size of the cod over the years. From conversations with scientists he thinks the reason may partly be a lack of oxygen in the water. In a paper dated 18 December 2018 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, Karin Limburg and Michele Casini show an inverse relationship between hypoxia (the occurrence of low oxygen levels in water) and growth. Areas in the Baltic Sea with depleted oxygen levels have been increasing, so cod may have been increasingly exposed to hypoxia resulting in lower growth.
With only few commercial species in the Baltic, ďŹ shing has to be sustainable Jacek Wittbrodt, managing director of the association, seems frustrated with the lack of progress on this issue. Since 2012 it has been obvious that there is a problem and it has been getting worse, he says. Everybody is aware of the issue, the ministry, NGOs, other countries around the Baltic, control agencies, but nobody seems to know how to solve it. While closing the fishery altogether has been discussed in some quarters, Mr Wittbrodt feels that this would not only affect fishers but also workers in downstream activities, processing, marketing, and distribution, making a complete ban on
the fishery highly unlikely. The Baltic Sea has relatively few commercially valuable species so prohibiting catches of one of these will have a significant impact on the fishermen. Another issue is the extent to which Polish catches of sprat are being used for fishmeal and fish oil as opposed to human consumption. According to Mr Wittbrodt more than nine tenths of the sprat goes into fishmeal and oil. Part of the problem he says is that the Polish processing industry does not have the capacity to handle the quantities of sprat that are landed. As a result, vessels sail to Danish fishmeal and oil factories and land the catches there. But the issue is also that the market for human consumption of sprat is extremely limited and expanding it will call for a long-term effort.
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