Cod in Subdivisions 25–32 (Eastern Baltic Sea)

The EC has agreed on a management plan for cod in the Baltic Sea in September 2007 (see Annexed text). For Eastern Baltic cod, the goal of the plan is a fishing mortality rate no higher than 0.3.

ICES interprets the F for the preceding year as the estimate of F for the year in which the assessment is carried out (i.e. the intermediate year). The plan specifies a 10% reduction in total fishing days at sea per year until the target F has been reached. In the ICES evaluation of this plan, this is also interpreted as a 10% reduction on F in the intermediate year assuming a constant fleet catchability. The plan sets a maximum change of 15% of the TAC between consecutive years, unless the fishing mortality is estimated to be higher than 0.6. In this latter case the TAC shall be set in correspondence to the reduction of fishing mortality by 10%. ICES has evaluated the management plan in 2009 and considers it to be in accordance with the precautionary approach. The evaluation is most sensitive to assumptions about implementation error; i.e. TAC and effort overshoot.