On April 28, the HELCOM fisheries and Environment Forum held a meeting in Riga where among other things the HELCOM ambitions and plans on how to increase the cooperation with ICES on fish and fisheries related issues were presented.
By strengthen the cooperating with ICES, HELCOM would be able to further influence and assist ICES in their challenges to include broader ecosystem aspects in the Baltic fisheries management, e.g. by sharing needed and relevant data collected in HELCOM monitoring programmes. The new strategy on how to streamline HELCOM activities to make HELCOM work more efficient was presented. Discussions were also around fisheries in Marine Protected Areas, how to improve management of migratory fish species (salmon and sturgeon) and conditions for establishing a sustainable aquaculture in the Baltic Sea region. The Coalition Clean Baltic presented a relevant report on the subject, see attached.
Since the meeting was held one day in advance of the BALTFISH Forum meeting, topics related to the upcoming BALTFISH meeting were also briefly presented and discussed (see link below).