Baltic quotas for 2013 have been set after the EU’s Agriculture and Fisheries Council reached an agreement, in an attempt to maintain workable stock fish levels.
This political agreement sets the maximum quantities of fish from specific stocks that can be caught in the Baltic Sea or TACs (total allowable catches).
The reduced quotas should also allow cod stocks to recover faster than expected. The aim of the proposal was to make fisheries in the Baltic Sea environmentally and economically sustainable by managing them via scientific advice.
European Commissioner Maria Damanaki representing the EU Commission meeting in Luxemburg, hailed this move as “a great success.”
The Commission said fishery ministers from Poland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia would cut cod quotas by 9.0 percent to 61,565 tons in the east of the Baltic Sea, in line with an EU recommendation.
