Rampant overfishing endangers Baltic fish stocks
Polish fishermen complain of EU harassment
By Pilvikki Kause
A storm is brewing, which means that coastal fisherman Zbignew Struck, 46, is taking in his salmon nets in the Bay of Puck in Poland.
"The storm could tangle the nets", he says from the cabin of his boat.
There is another reason for the haste: Struck has cast his nets into the sea without permission.
"I am afraid that the fishing inspectors will show up. They watch us from the air and at sea, and wait for us in the harbours", says the fisherman, who shakes his head at the thought of a hefty fine.
The inspectors have been cracking down on coastal and open-sea fishing, as Poland has been put under pressure by the European Union to do something about rampant fish poaching.
According to an assessment made last year, Poland had been in violation of cod quotas. As punishment, a ban on cod fishing in the Baltic Sea was imposed on Poland for the second half of the year.
The most defiant flouted the ban. Now the fishing routine is nearly back to normal, and illegal fishing continues unabated.
The most vocal group of rebel fishermen live on the Hel Peninsula, a narrow strip of land which looks like a cow's tail when seen on a map. It is where Zbignew Struck lives.
Struck's vessel cuts through the small waves. His assistant Marcin Nimoth starts to turn the net winch.
Several metres of empty netting come out of the water, containing half a dozen small flounder and a couple of undersized salmon.
The fisherman says that there is plenty of eel to go around, although stocks of the snake-like fish have plummeted in the Baltic. Catches of the most important staple fish, salmon, sprat, whitefish, Baltic herring, and cod, have also diminished in the past two decades.
Fisheries experts are most concerned about cod. They say that fishing of the eastern Baltic population of cod should be immediately banned at least for a year.
Not much heed is paid to such opinions in the living room of the Kohnke family, in Jastarna, on the Hel Peninsula.
"With fishing there are fat years and lean years. Sometimes all you have to do is show your net on the shore and they are full. In other years, you have to run around everywhere", Wojciech Kohnke, 40, says.
"There has been salmon and cod up to the hairline for a year now", insists the family's patriarch, 68-year-old Jerzy Kohnke.
The Kohnkes are hardened professionals. "Our forefathers fished here when the Hel Peninsula was born", Jerzy Kohnke jokes.
The Kohnkes are Kasubs, descendants of the original inhabitants of the peninsula, as are the majority of fishermen in nearby areas.
They are angered that people in far-away Brussels try to dictate when they can untie their boats from the dock, and how many fish they are allowed to bring in.
They see a political battle in the background. With too many vessels in all of the fishing fleets of the whole world, attempts are made to put a poor country like Poland in a tight spot, purely out of self-interest.
The salmon farmers and herring fishermen of a rich country like Norway are also seen to be in on the game, in the view of the Polish fishermen. The tighter the restrictions in the Baltic Sea, the better the Norwegians' position is.
The Kohnkes have a quota for four tonnes of cod a month. "We generally catch between 10 and 12 tonnes."
Familiar fish merchants buy the illegal catches.
The nearest inspectors, Tomasz Bartczak and Mark Sikora, are examining vessels more than ten kilometres to the west, in Wladyslawowo, the second-largest fishing port on the Baltic Sea.
The guards, in their dark clothing, count fish boxes, look for hidden fish in the hold, and go through the fishing journals shown by the captain. Bartczak bends over to measure the size of the mesh in the cod net. The EU requirements are met.
Sprat trawler captain Rajmund Budzisz, 47, is disappointed. The second wire of the 28-metre trawler has broken, and the catch was small as well.
"Two tonnes of sprat and a box of cod! I don't remember a year for sprat that has been as tragic as this one is", he sighs.
Budzisz criticises the massive fishing vessels of countries on the Baltic Sea that are used to catch fish for animal feed. They pull nets that are 60 metres wide. "Something like that suits the oceans, but not the shallow Baltic."
With moist eyes, he says that a sustainable fishing policy should be instituted within two years.
Possibilities for a recovery in the Batlic do exist, because the water near Poland has become significantly cleaner.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.4.2008
PILVIKKI KAUSE / Helsingin Sanomat
pilvikki@wp.pl
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| 29.4.2008 - THIS WEEK |
 Rampant overfishing endangers Baltic fish stocks |
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