The government must not sacrifice our beloved Baltic Sea Karin Pihl

You would have thought that people were queuing for the ticket release for a concert with Taylor Swift. But it wasn’t a glimpse of the American singer that people were looking for in the late summer of 2023. It was surströmming.

The goods disappeared from store shelves faster than they were replenished. A secondary market for fermented fish emerged. Cans were sold for hundreds of kroner on Tradera.

Surströmming, which is almost a local national dish in large parts of Norrland and along the Baltic coast, has become hard currency.

Surströmming producers have testified in recent years that the fish is getting leaner and leaner. In the end, it doesn’t work anymore.

– I am most worried that the knowledge and tradition will disappear, it is really sad if this continues, said Jan Söderström at the family business Oskars to SVT 2022.

Then it was so bad that the company was threatened with closure. Now you’re pushing your way forward. The future is uncertain. And the frustration is palpable.

In 2021, the surströmming salteries teamed up with Sweden’s anglers and demanded action from the government to secure the stock of sturgeon in the inland sea.

Unfortunately, the distress call has not been heard. On the contrary.

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Report after report shows the same thing. Strömmingen, or the herring as it is called south of Kalmarsund, is in danger of dying out. In the southern Bothnian Sea, only eight percent of the stock remains compared to the 1970s and 1980s, measurements carried out show of the Swedish University of Agriculture. When the researchers did test fishing, they did not catch a single fish larger than 25 centimeters.

The spawning biomass – the part of a fish stock that has reached reproductive age – is close to the critical level for reproduction, according to the international research organization ICES.

There is a risk of it crashing.

The fishery pulls up three times as much fish as seals and birds eat together each year.

The strained position of the current in the Baltic Sea has several causes. Climate change makes the water warmer, which increases the fish’s metabolism. The herring gulf seal and cormorant populations are currently large.

But the most important explanation is human activity at sea. The fishery pulls up three times as much fish as seals and birds eat together each year.

The culprit is not coastal fishing – which the Oskars family business is engaged in. Small-scale stream fishing constitutes a negligible part.

It is the industrial trawling that is the problem.

Every year the EU sets a quota for how much fish can be caught, which is based on ICES research. The aim is to secure long-term sustainable fishing.

Last year, the EU Commission wanted to stop sturgeon fishing in almost the entire Baltic Sea. But the EU ministers, who have the final say, did not want that. They defied the commission and the scientists. The quota was certainly lowered, but contrary to the recommendation, the green light was still given for continued trawl fishing.

That with the Swedish government’s good memory.

In practice, it is Sweden and Finland that set the quotas for the Bothnian Sea. And Fisheries Minister Peter Kullgren (KD) was satisfied with the decision. It was completely in line with the government’s ambition. To critical questions, the minister has replied that zero quotas would have threatened coastal fishing. That is, the type that the Oskars family business operates in Hälsingland.

It is pure untruth. Allowing industrial fishing is not necessary to protect small-scale fishing. It has always been possible to exclude it when the quotas are designed.

On the contrary, it is the industrial trawlers who threaten small businesses. And in the sportfishing world, dissatisfaction with the fisheries minister is simmering. One person I talk to says he has not seen a lower interest in fishing issues in his 25 years of being involved in the issue.

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The lack of streaming does not only cause long queues outside Ica in Luleå. It has also driven a wedge into the Swedish fishing industry.

In practice, all sturgeon fishing in the Baltic Sea is used to make fishmeal. The fish is ground down and becomes fodder for mink farms and salmon farms.

For the Swedish part, there are a few companies that are responsible for fishing. An examination that DN did last year shows that nine families from the West Coast accounted for 73 percent of the Swedish fishing in the Baltic Sea in the last five years.

It has led to a conflict between East and West.

– That you can have the heart to come up and fish an ocean where you don’t even have anything to do, that’s what I don’t understand. If they had dug up and woke up grandfather, he would have blown up their boats, Baltic fisherman Anders Bergman told DN.

The West Coast families, for their part, say that they follow the quotas that the politicians have decided on. And that they trust that they are set in accordance with what is ecologically sustainable.

But unfortunately they are not. There is much evidence that research has overestimated the herring’s ability to reproduce, which has led to overly generous quotas.

And it will get even worse in the future. Due to a new bill, the quotas may increase even more.

The EU Commission seems to have picked up the signals from the fisheries ministers. In a new bill, it is proposed that the so-called five percent rule be scrapped. This after pressure from the ministers and the interest group BSAC, which represents the fishing industry and fishmeal producers.

The five percent rule states that the fishing quotas must be designed in a way that guarantees that there is a maximum of five percent risk of the stock reaching critically low levels. It’s a safety brake.

In the introduction to the bill, the commission explicitly writes that, after discussions with interest organizations and ministers from the EU countries with coasts towards the Baltic Sea, it has come to the conclusion that the rule must be abolished. The stakeholders have, according to the commission, expressed a “deep concern” about the “serious socio-economic consequences” that the rule entails.

It refers to financial losses for the large-scale fishing industry and fishmeal factories.

The proposal is now on the European Parliament’s table and will only be decided after the elections in June.

If it were to get the green light from the EU parliamentarians, it would mean that significantly higher risks are allowed. As much as a 20 percent risk may become possible. It could therefore be one in five that the stock collapses.

If the Baltic Sea’s sturgeon stock collapses, the sour strømming premiere will become an extinct tradition that Swedes will read about in the future at the Nordic Museum.

In practice, the commission is playing Russian roulette with the Baltic Stream. The odds are even higher.

This is serious. And it is remarkable that the process is already underway, without much debate. Even though there are EU elections in two months, the issue has gone under the radar.

Among the Swedish EU candidates, interest is mixed. A survey carried out by the newspaper Sportfiskarna, and to which I had access before publication, shows that only half of the top candidates prioritize a seat on the EU Parliament’s fisheries committee. However, a majority wants to stop trawling of streaming. Only the Christian Democrats, fisheries minister Kullgren’s party, flatly say no to a ban.

If the Baltic Sea’s sturgeon stock collapses, the surströmming premiere will become an extinct tradition that Swedes in the future can only read about at the Nordic Museum.

But even the person who jumps into the lake as soon as someone opens a can has reason to be worried.

Scientists are already warning that the big spiny stickleback has more or less taken over along the coasts of the Baltic Sea. Eutrophication, climate change and heavy fishing by predatory fish such as sturgeon are likely explanations.

Strömming eats spikes. The spike, in turn, eats crustaceans, which eat filamentous algae. Reduced stream stocks thus lead to more algae. This means an increased risk of severe algal blooms. It can be dangerous, especially for small children, who can be poisoned by the water.

It is not possible to bathe then.

In the long run, it can have major financial consequences. Tourism around the Baltic Sea – swimming, camping, sport fishing, boating – is valued at 33 billion euros per year. If it is not possible to swim, the Germans will take their caravans elsewhere. Swedes and Finns sell their summer cottage and buy an apartment in Spain instead. Anglers, who do not catch any salmon in the river, have to find another leisure activity.

However, what a destroyed inland sea means culturally and humanly cannot be valued in money.

It is impossible to put a price on the feeling of jumping in from the jetty on a July day when the sun glistens over a shiny and clear blue water surface.

When you lie on your back in the fresh water and look up at the sky, you realize that – even though it is winter nine months a year here – you will never want to live anywhere else but in Sweden.

That a conservative government, supported by a nationalist party, is prepared to sacrifice all this for short-term financial gain is incomprehensible.

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READ MORE: Soon the Baltic Sea will be a dead mass of algae and plastic