Tight surveillance reduces infringements

by Thomas Jensen

Indrė Šidlauskienė, Director of the Fisheries Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania

Fisheries plays an important role in the economies of coastal regions throughout Europe. It is therefore vital to exploit the oceans’ aquatic resources sustainably to avoid the depletion of fish stocks, a rusting fishing fleet, unemployed fishermen and seafood shortages.

One element in ensuring the sustainable use resources is fisheries control, an activity carried out in Lithuania by the Fisheries Service under the Ministry of Agriculture, and specifically by the Baltic Sea Fisheries Control Division, Baltic Sea Fisheries Regulation Division and the Fisheries Monitoring and Control Division.

Monitoring vessels in the Baltic and on the high seas

The Fisheries Service operates a National Fisheries Monitoring Centre where fisheries officers continuously monitor fishing activities of fishing vessels flying the Lithuanian flag as well as fishing vessels of other EU member states within Lithuanian waters. Currently there are 143 fishing vessels in Lithuania’s fishing fleet register. The majority (102) is small vessels, 3 to 14.6 m in length. These vessels only fish in the Lithuanian coastal waters of the Baltic Sea. Another segment of the Lithuanian fishing fleet is the 29 vessels operating in the open waters of the Baltic Sea with an overall length of 23 to 50 m. There are currently 12 fishing vessels ranging between 39 to 136 m in length that operate in high seas (in the Barents, Greenland, Norwegian, and Irminger seas together with the waters of North West, Southwest Atlantic and South Pacific) as well as in the North Sea, the European Western Waters, until recently in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Mauritania, and now in the EEZ of Morocco and Angola. This segment may be the smallest in number, but usually catches are ten times bigger and more, when compared to the Baltic Sea (including the coastal waters fishery) catches. In 2014, 13,428 tonnes of fish of various species were caught in the Baltic Sea (including the catch from coastal waters), most of which (over 70 percent) was sprat. In the same period the high seas catch was 134,282 tonnes of various fish species, the majority of which was small pelagic species, such as sardinella, horse mackerel and Atlantic mackerel.

Fisheries officers from the Lithuanian Fisheries Service mount joint patrols with officers from other nations to monitor and inspect vessels.

The size of the fishing fleet, its catch and the distance to its fishing areas speaks for itself. A significant effort is put into inspecting fishing vessels of various countries operating in the North West and North East Atlantic. Every year, not less than 5 percent of the landings from third (non EU) countries fishing/transporting vessels are inspected at the port of Klaipėda, as well as 30 percent of the Baltic Sea catch, which is landed in the territory of Lithuania as well as 5 percent of the fish sold through auction. The Fisheries Service’s fishery officers monitor fishing in the Baltic Sea from the air in cooperation with the Lithuanian Air Force. The Fisheries Service also cooperates with other control institutions – the State Food and Veterinary Service, State Customs Department, Coast Guard, Navy and others. With its two high-speed fisheries control vessels “Vakaris” and “Tobis”, the Fisheries Service inspects commercial fishery vessels and angler boats in the Baltic Sea. The service also informs the sector about the latest legislative amendments, and provides it with the latest updates of technical measures. Experts from the service also train fishing vessels’ masters how to properly fill in electronic fishing logbooks.

Advanced electronic registration systems used to share data

The service tracks in real time the movements of the fishing vessels at sea and monitor catches by using the satellite vessel monitoring and electronic registry systems. The data on the amount of fish caught and landed, first sales of fisheries products and other related information is automatically transferred into the Integrated Fisheries Data Information System from fishing vessels and first buyers. Lithuania is among the leading countries in the European Union with regard to the development of such systems. The data is validated, processed and forwarded to the European Commission, Statistical office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT), European Fisheries Control Agency, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), Lithuanian Statistics Department and other state and international organisations.

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The number of infringements both in marketplaces and supermarkets has gradually been decreasing. Fisheries Service inspectors have in recent years been monitoring these outlets to ensure that the fish has been purchased legally. They verify if the sold fish is of the legal size, whether it was caught during the fishing period foreseen by the legislation, and whether the labels meet the requirements. These checks are often carried out together with the State Food and Veterinary Service. During 2014, 36 fish sales places were checked in various regions of Lithuania and no significant infringements were found.

Inspectors from the Fisheries Service make sure the fishing gear conforms to the regulations, the fish are the right size and species, and that the catch has been properly entered into the logbook.

Lithuania plays an active role in international control missions

According to the provisions of European Council Regulation (EC) No. 1005/2008, to prevent illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, all EU countries every year have to inspect at least five percent of fish landings and transhipments from the fishing vessels of non EU countries in their designated harbours. Each year fishery officers inspect vessels that unload two to three or even over four thousand tonnes of frozen fisheries products at the Klaipėda seaport. The officers monitor fishing vessels’ engine power and also participate in EU control missions – boarding and inspecting fisheries vessels in the Atlantic Ocean. They also take part in joint inspection missions in other EU ports two-three times per year. EU international sea-going fisheries control missions often last up to one month, during which teams of inspectors carry out operative inspections of fishing vessels in the open seas. They inspect whether the proper fishing gear is used, whether the quantity of frozen fish products in the freezing holds of the vessels correspond to the quantity of
fish declared, and whether vessels masters properly fill in and report fishing data.

Fisheries officers from the Baltic Sea Fisheries Control Division participate in the implementation of the Baltic Sea Joint Deployment Plan, whereby fisheries control officers of EU countries in the Baltic Sea region carry out joint inspections in the Baltic Sea, its harbours and perform air surveillance. In 2014 for one month Lithuania was responsible for coordinating this plan and officers (inspectors) participated in joint inspections on board Swedish and Finnish fisheries patrol vessels in the sea as well as in Polish and Latvian harbours.

The Fisheries Service is currently implementing projects to improve various IT systems used in implementing fishery control. These include a traceability systems to track fisheries products, which will help to monitor the movement of fisheries products in whole market chain – from the fishing vessel up to the consumer. In the future, the implementation of the national fisheries control programmes will surely continue: new information systems for ensuring fisheries control will be installed and the existing ones will be improved.

The activities of the Fisheries Service ensure the implementation of international obligations of the Republic of Lithuania and contribute to ensuring sufficient amount of fish for today and in the future.

For more information, Indrė Šidlauskienė Director of the Fisheries Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania, Indre.Sidlauskiene@zuv.lt
For more information about the high seas fisheries control, Tomas Kazlauskas, Head of the Fisheries Monitoring and Control Division, Tomas.Kazlauskas @zuv.lt
For more information about Baltic Sea fisheries control, Erlandas Lendzbergas, Head of the Baltic Sea Fisheries Control Division, Erlandas.Lendzbergas@zuv.lt

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