The Swedish and Danish Societies for Nature Conservation have written a joint letter to their respective ministers for fisheries, demanding zones with total fishing bans in the Kattegat part of the North Sea.
The cod stocks there are seen as severely threatened, maybe more so than anywhere else in the world, and several local stocks are likely to have been completely wiped out. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has recommended that all fishing of cod in the Kattegat should be abolished, a recommendation that has been issued every year since 2002.
The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) notes that the EU fisheries ministers have failed to follow the repeated recommendations, leading the threatened cod stocks to dwindle to a historic low.
The Swedish Board of Fisheries and its Danish counterpart recently agreed to propose to their respective governments cod fishing bans in certain zones in the Kattegat. The Swedish and Danish Nature Conservation Societies now write that such bans must include species of fish where cod is hauled in as by-catch, as well.
“A ban would have no effect otherwise”, said SSNC Secretary General Svante Axelsson, “and we would be unable to save the cod in the Kattegatt at all”.