Sustaining the World's Large Marine Ecosystems

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and with the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), the BSRP established a contract with the Stena Line, the owner of the passenger ferry Stena Nordica, for this ferry to be used as a Ship of Opportunity (SOOP) on the route from Karlskrona, Sweden to Gdynia, Poland. This aimed to extend existing spatial and temporal sampling of SOOP vessels to the Southern Baltic east of Bornholm, a key area for the Baltic cod stock. The new route is now contributing to the re-establishment of lower trophic level productivity assessments, including pelagic autotrophs, phytobenthos and zooplankton, and is improving the data needed to develop spring bloom and other relevant indices. For several decades many toxic substances have been known to threaten the Baltic Sea environment. This includes heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), oil pollution, artificial radionuclides and dumped munitions. Many of the heavy metals and POPs can become magnified in the higher levels of the food chain. Halogenated hydrocarbons such as polychlorinated biphenyl congeners (PCBs), the pesticides DDT, Lindane, their metabolites and isomers, and unintentional by-products of combustion processes, are classed as xenobiotics, i.e. unknown to the environment before their human production. Most are accumulated in the fatty tissues of organisms, and many are harmful even at low concentrations. The PCBs and DDT are toxic substances that became well known and frightening to the public around the Baltic Sea in the late 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the Baltic grey seal population decreased considerably and it was discovered that up to 80% of their females were sterile, mainly due to total or partial obstruction of the uterine tubes (Bergman and Olsson, 1985). It was thought that the main reason was the high concentrations of PCBs and DDT in their tissues. At that time the presence of these pollutants in guillemots and white eagles were also correlated to their decrease in populations. After international measures were implemented in the late 1970s to reduce and ban the input of PCBs and DDT, concentrations decreased in body tissues for all three species mentioned and their populations have steadily increased. The DDT and PCB problem in the Baltic has successfully been addressed through legislation and governance. Since the implementation of the 1988 HELCOM Ministerial Declaration, the load of hazardous substances to the Baltic Sea has diminished by 20-50%. However, there are many hundreds of potentially hazardous chemicals emitted to the Baltic Sea and some new contaminants have been recently reported for the area that may create future environmental problems. These are endocrine disrupting chemicals, polybrominated flame retardants (PBBs and PBDEs), complex chlorinated chemicals from pulp and paper mills, and dioxins that accumulate in fatty fish such as herring and sprat. With the establishment of a BSRP ICES Study Group on Baltic Ecosystem Health Issues (SGEH), the concept of Ecosystem Health was introduced into the Baltic Sea science community and into the work of ICES and HELCOM. The SGEH became instrumental in linking conventions, stakeholders and science. In the application of the ecosystem approach for the management of the Baltic Sea, ecological quality objectives (EcoQOs) were developed. This became a key 70
issue for the CCEH and its three lead laboratories. Since such indicators had been developed and applied earlier by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the Great Lakes, the EPA was invited and a highly qualified person participated in the whole process. The work resulted in a list of indicators to be used in assessments of the Baltic Sea LME. The indicators will likely be used in HELCOM’s thematic assessments on biodiversity, hazardous substances, and monitoring of biological effects of harmful substances. New alien species appearing in the Baltic Sea have been the responsibility of the Lead Laboratory (LL) for Alien species. In the last 150 years, with accelerating speed over the last two decades, the Baltic Sea has received over 100 alien species, several of which may cause biodiversity loss and adverse environmental, economic and social impacts. Most of them have been transported and released into the Baltic Sea by ships, especially tankers releasing their ballast water. The best known alien fish species in the Baltic is the Ponto-Caspian round goby, Neogobius melanostomus. This 25 cm long, edible fish was first observed in the Gulf of Gdańsk in 1990. Today it is distributed all along the southern and eastern part of the Baltic Sea where its aggressive and territorial behavior dominates the habitat (Almqvist 2008). Its successful reproductive and opportunistic behavior makes it a threat to native fish species and their habitats. A recent invader to the Baltic Sea also represents a major threat to the ecosystem: the American comb jelly Mneiopsis leidyi. It was found for the first time in the southern Baltic in the Fall of 2006 and in the northern Baltic in 2007. Its abundance in August 2008 was 40-60% higher than in August 2007, thus indicating an adaptation to Baltic Sea conditions (Letiniemi 2008). Fish and Fisheries The commercially most important fish species in the open Baltic Sea are cod, herring, sprat and Baltic salmon. The total annual catch of these fish stocks has increased 10-fold during the past 50 years. Until the 1930s, catches remained at about 120,000 tonnes, then increased to about 500,000 tonnes in the late 1950s and, after a steep rise in the mid 1960s, reached almost a million tonnes by the end of the 1970s. In the last 20-30 years however, overfishing and the failure of fisheries management to maintain sustainable fisheries and conserve commercial fish stocks have become increasingly more pronounced. Nearly all commercially important fish stocks have been severely depleted and have been outside of safe biological limits due to decades of unsustainable fishing effort resulting from excessive fishing capacity and inappropriate fishing practices. Cod is the most important fish in the Baltic. From a maximum annual catch of cod in the mid 1980s of nearly 450,000 tonnes, the nominal catch steadily declined by 1992 to about 50,000 tonnes and has hovered around 100,000 tonnes since then (Figure 3). 71
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Sustaining the World’s Large Mari
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Preface This volume, Sustaining the
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describing practical applications o
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Contents Preface iii Contents vii G
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GEF Support for the Global Movement
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ozone depletion, and international
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These processes are critical for in
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(BCLME) project serves as a success
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Ultimately, each nation must find a
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freshwater basins to reverse natura
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Indicators of Changing States of La
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engaged in the preparation and impl
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levels below fish in the marine foo
Page 27 and 28: LME observations are integrated int
Page 29 and 30: Sea surface temperature: The Earth
Page 31 and 32: een applying ecosystem-based method
Page 33 and 34: Figure 14. Value of reported landin
Page 35 and 36: 3) Pollution and Ecosystem Health M
Page 37 and 38: The Global Environment Facility (GE
Page 39 and 40: eing used to hindcast and forecast
Page 41 and 42: Using N yield (kg N per km 2 waters
Page 43 and 44: ecosystems (Galloway et al. 2004) w
Page 45 and 46: Somali Coastal Current Guinea Curre
Page 47 and 48: At the LME scale, Hoagland and Jin
Page 49 and 50: are all actively involved in reachi
Page 51 and 52: waste disposal, transportation, rec
Page 53 and 54: The paradigm shift toward ecosystem
Page 55 and 56: Hoagland P, Jin D. 2006. Accounting
Page 57: Trenberth KE, Jones PD, Ambenje P,
Page 60 and 61: Figure 1. The Benguela Currrent Lar
Page 62 and 63: The workshop used a logic framework
Page 64 and 65: The institutional arrangements outl
Page 66 and 67: The Benguela Current Commission sta
Page 68 and 69: November 2006. LMEs, GOOS, GEOSS an
Page 70 and 71: Benguela - Current of Plenty 2008 -
Page 72 and 73: estimated at 30 years. These featur
Page 74 and 75: Since the 1940s, the accelerated in
Page 76 and 77: Over the years the BSRP has produce
Page 80 and 81: Landings in Baltic Sea LME Figure 3
Page 82 and 83: has been instrumental in the prepar
Page 85 and 86: Changing States of the Yellow Sea L
Page 87 and 88: The Yellow Sea LME lies in the warm
Page 89 and 90: As a result, larger, higher trophic
Page 91 and 92: Figure 6. Serious eutrophication, h
Page 93 and 94: competitive species uses the surplu
Page 95 and 96: system based on sustainable food pr
Page 97 and 98: Some Considerations of Fisheries Ma
Page 99 and 100: already happened. Moreover, most fi
Page 101 and 102: important scientific information to
Page 103 and 104: (i) IMTA of abalone and kelp Figure
Page 105 and 106: The purpose of this activity is to
Page 107 and 108: UNDP/GEF (2007a) Transboundary diag
Page 109 and 110: The IUCN Support of Marine Protecte
Page 111 and 112: potential of coastal and marine fis
Page 113 and 114: activities to support local uses of
Page 115 and 116: The percentage of protection is sti
Page 117 and 118: women, were further key aspects of
Page 119 and 120: Future Needs of the LME Approach Wo
Page 121 and 122: those goals in mind, BCLME became a
Page 123 and 124: 2007 was a step in that direction.
Page 125 and 126: Outreach and Education for Ecosyste
Page 127 and 128: A second phase, from the mid 1990s
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acidification and nutrient over-enr
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Tide” that surprised me is that i
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The UNEP LME Report (2008): Global
Page 135 and 136:
Sherman K, Hempel G, editors. 2008.
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ANNEX 1986 Vol. 1 1989 Vol. 2 Publi
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1991 Vol. 4 1993 Vol. 5 Sherman, K.
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of the United States H. A. Walker K
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25. Summary and recommendations E.
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Part IV. Assessment of ecologic str
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2003 Vol. 12 dynamics 8. Physico-ch
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14. Applications of the large marin
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