At their first meeting, on 29 August 2015 in Utska, Poland, small-scale fishers from the Baltic Sea (from Poland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany), united in the platform Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE), issued a joint statement calling for a ban on the small pelagics fishery for fishmeal, as well as a ban on trawling in inshore areas — issues that are also at the heart of many African small-scale fishers’ demands.
The aim of the small-scale fishers from the Baltic region is to not only move towards more sustainable fisheries but also to ensure the survival and future prosperity of their fishing sector.
At the meeting speakers highlighted the dire situation for fish and low-impact fishermen in the region and the urgent need for much more effective management based on long-term sustainability rather than on short-term profit.
They demanded an end to pelagic trawling for herring and sprat for fishmeal production in the southern Baltic, the introduction of a ban on trawling in Polish waters within six miles to protect the shallower and more biologically diverse inshore areas and a review of fishing for fishmeal as this negatively effects the ecosystem balance to the detriment of fish and fishermen alike.
The meeting also demanded that decisionmakers follow the advice of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) when deciding on total allowable catches (TACs) and quotas for the Baltic Sea.
Finally, the participants at the meeting registered their disagreement with the reduction in the landing size for cod in the Baltic and insisted that Member States immediately and genuinely implement the requirements of Article 17 of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in order to provide a fairer allocation of quota in line with environmental, social and economic criteria.
The LIFE statement can be acessed at: http://lifeplatform.eu/the-low-impact-fishermen-of-the-baltic-region-join-their-forces-2/