Which kind of salmon fishing experience do you want?

Salmon fishing in the Baltic Sea is not only a popular recreational activity, but also an important industry. To strengthen the protection of weak salmon stocks in the southern Baltic Sea, the EU Council of Ministers decided in 2022 to limit the harvest of salmon to fish without adipose fins (farmed fish). At the same time, a limit of one salmon per day per fisherman was introduced. But what do fishermen think about these new rules? And what kind of fishing experience and rules would they prefer?

Background

The Baltic salmon stock consists of a large number of salmon populations originating from different rivers along the Baltic Sea coast. In general, salmon stocks have developed very positively since the 1990s, which is reflected in a continuous increase in the number of smolts migrating out of the rivers. However, in the southern range there are still some rivers with very weak salmon stocks that show little recovery despite the reduction in fishing mortality. These also do not contribute much to salmon production in the Baltic Sea. Despite this, there is a risk that local populations will be lost forever and that the genetic diversity of Baltic salmon will be reduced. 

As a large part of the Baltic salmon fisheries (commercial and recreational) take place in areas where populations become mixed, this led to the recommendation to close all fisheries in the southern and central Baltic Sea that could potentially catch salmon from rivers with weak populations. To protect these weak salmon stocks, an EU-wide regulation was introduced in 2022 that completely bans commercial fishing on the high seas south of the Åland Sea. For recreational fisheries, a uniform limit of one salmon per day per fisherman was introduced in the same area. In addition, the removal of salmon was restricted to fish without adipose fins (farmed fish).

The introduction of the new regulations for recreational salmon fishing was a drastic step and has significant consequences for fishermen's behavior and thus also serious economic consequences.

Objective

The objective of this study is to understand which rules and fishing experience trolling fishermen prefer in the Baltic Sea and how they evaluate the current rules. In addition, we are interested in the fishermen's opinion on the current situation of the Baltic Sea salmon stock and the management measures. The results obtained in this study can be used as a basis for informing policy makers and developing recreational fisheries management that takes into account both the good ecological status of salmon stocks and the economic importance of recreational salmon fishing. We use a mixture of a conventional survey and a so-called "Choice-Experiment" in a large online survey on trolling fishing in the Baltic Sea. In the Choice-Experiment, fishermen decide between different, predetermined fishing experiences and rules, making it possible to investigate their preferences. Participants are recruited on the spot through personal interviews directly in the port and by advertising the study on social media.

A distinctive feature is that the survey and the Choice-experiment are being conducted simultaneously in Denmark and Germany to obtain a greater variety of preferences for different regulations and fishing experiences and to obtain more robust results.

The project is carried out in collaboration with the Thünen Institute Germany, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the Leibniz-Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB).