Greenpeace Sweden claims to have documented ”systematic” ,“intensive” and “continuous” illegal fishing by Danish vessels in a protected, closed-for-fishing area of the Kattegat.
From 1 January 2009 Sweden and Denmark jointly closed a part of the Kattegat for all fisheries, and enforced restrictions in three other zones. The move was an attempt to protect the seriously threatened cod in the area.
In an op-ed article in the Göteborgs-Posten morning daily, two spokespeople for Greenpeace Sweden now claim to have video evidence of three Danish vessels trawling in the no-fishing zone, and data from electronic supervision that give heavy indications that two other vessels were doing the same.
Greenpeace said they had secretly placed monitoring equipment on six vessels measuring less than 15 metres from the fishing port of Gilleje on the northern tip of Zealand. All vessels above that limit are required by the EU to carry Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS), enabling the authorities to keep watch on where they are fishing.
Greenpeace says five of those six ships were traced to the closed area, three of them caught on video illegally fishing, and two others monitored to be moving around systematically and at very low speed, indications that they were trawling.
A spokesperson said that all evidence gathered would now be handed over to the police.
The Swedish Board of Fisheries and the national Coast Guard confirm to FISH that 20 Danish fishing vessels have been caught red-handed fishing in the no-fishing zone so far in less than a year.
None of the cases have reached court yet, and the issue of a possible revoking of their licenses is for Denmark to decide, after the legal process in Sweden has been carried through. Formal charges have been brought in one of the cases, however, where a coast guard vessel managed to follow the Danish ship to port and identify the skipper.
The evidence to be presented in court is photo documentation from a Coast Guard airplane allegedly showing trawl wires cast out, etc. Since none of the cases have been decided yet, it still remains to be seen if that is proof enough.
Johan Löwenadler, head of the Control Department in the Board of Fisheries, confirmed that no Swedish fishermen have been caught illegally fishing in the area, even though it is in Swedish territorial waters. He added that he was “surprised” that the Danes had been neglecting the ban “so flagrantly and frequently”.
Sweden’s Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Eskil Erlandsson later told the Dagens Nyheter daily that he was “both disappointed and disgusted” hearing that the agreement was transgressed, adding that he had “spoken today with my Danish colleague, and he is prepared to toughen Danish sanctions until this disobedience stops”.
In a statement on the web, Anders Munk Jensen, head of the Danish Fisheries Directorate, said he “strongly regretted” that “the few destroy for the many” and that his agency would “consider” further sanctions.
In the spring of 2009, Greenpeace sank a large number of huge stone boulders in the area in a much-publicised action to prevent bottom trawling in this Natura 2000 area. In a letter to the Swedish fisheries minister just before the action was to take place, his Danish colleague threatened to leave the accord if Sweden did not prevent the demonstration – a threat that was not followed through.
According to Greenpeace, that letter was prompted by pressure from the politically influential fishermen in Gilleje, one of Denmark’s biggest fishing ports.