Memo: Increasing selectivity in cod fisheries in the Baltic Sea

On 19.3.01, the European Community and the other contracting parties to the International Baltic Sea Fishery Commission (IBSFC) unanimously agreed on new methods to increase selectivity in cod trawl fisheries. At an extraordinary session of this regional fisheries organisation, held in Brussels on 13-14 March 2001, IBSFC recommended three new technical measures aiming to allow juvenile cod to escape from trawl nets and Danish seines. One of those measures provided for the use of a new type of square mesh window resulting from the best ever researched project in cod selectivity financed by the Commission, the so-called BACOMA (Improving Baltic Cod Management) project. The recommended measures will have to be implemented by 1.1.02 at the latest.