The Baltic Sea Regional Advisory Council (RAC) is planning a conference on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Copenhagen in March 2007. The focus of the conference is to identify the actions needed to minimize IUU in the Baltic Sea.
The conference aims to adress the relationship between catching capacity and the catching opportunities as well as investigate the role and functioning of the control and enforcement mechanisms in the Baltic states. The Fisheries Secretariat is, as one of several members of the Baltic RAC, active in the preparation of the conference.
The level of IUU in Baltic cod fisheries is very high, estimates range from 30% to 50% of the total catch. Some figures recently printed in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza on May 4th 2006 suggests even higher levels of IUU.
The nations with the largest shares of the cod quotas in the Baltic are Denmark, Sweden and Poland.