Economic and social analysis of the use of marine waters examines the economic contribution to regional and national economies from using marine waters in their current state. This contribution is measured with economic and social indicators. In this report, the information is derived mainly from existing statistics, except for marine and coastal recreation, where statistics are complemented with data on economic value to citizens.
The indicators do not capture the negative economic impacts that marine uses may have on the quality of the marine environment and thus potentially on other uses of the marine environment, but are a piece of the overall picture of how society and the marine environment are linked.
Further improving our understanding of the economic contribution from marine activities will require harmonised data across all coastal countries, reporting data separately for different sea areas Baltic and North Seas , and differentiating between land activities, freshwater activities and marine activities, particularly for tourism.
This assessment uses core indicators to measure the status of the Baltic Sea marine environment on the basis of selected and representative elements. The core indicators were selected according to a set of principles including ecological and policy relevance, measurability with the monitoring data and linkage to anthropogenic pressures HELCOM c.
The HELCOM core indicators evaluate the observed status in relation to a regionally agreed threshold value, in many cases using data from regionally coordinated monitoring.
Hence, the results indicate whether status is good or not according to each of the core indicators. The integrated tools were also used in the initial holistic assessment HELCOM a and have been developed further in the second holistic assessment.
The integrated assessments do not only show whether status is good or not, but also indicate the distance to good status by use of five categories; two representing good status and three representing not good status.
The assessments are performed at the spatial scale of HELCOM assessment units, which have four different levels; each core indicator being assessed at its most relevant scale. For example, birds are assessed at level 1 which is the whole region, salmon and sea trout, as well as zooplankton are assessed at level 2 which further subdivides the Baltic Sea into sub-basins.
Level 3 separates the sub-basins also into coastal and offshore areas, and level 4 uses a finer subdivision of coastal areas, in line with national management practices such as water bodies as designated under the EU Water Framework Directive.
The assessment is based on currently available core indicators. For some elements, operational indicators are still lacking or limited such as for benthic and pelagic habitats, health of marine mammals and food webs. The assessment is organised according to Pressures on the environment Chapter 4 and the status of Biodiversity and food webs Chapter 5.
The indicators used in the respective sub-chapters are listed in Table B. The EU Marine Strategy Framework descriptor related to the removal of commercial fish and shellfish can be associated with the provisions of HELCOM Declaration on ecosystem-based fisheries, while hydrological conditions cannot be directly assigned to any segment of the Baltic Sea Action Plan.
Maritime activities, which is a focal area of HELCOM and one of the four BSAP segments, is linked to several of the descriptors, including eutrophication, contaminants, and non-indigenous species.
Table B. The indicators are presented by the segments of the Baltic Sea Action Plan: Eutrophication green , Hazardous substances purple and Maritime activities orange , and the follow-up declarations burgundy.
All indicators on eutrophication and hazardous substances are also relevant for the maritime segment of the Baltic Sea Action Plan. Additionally, single or cumulative impacts might trigger changes in the food web, with potential cascading effects further up or down in the food web. Some species migrate far and encounter several different environments and different types of pressures during their life. Other species are local and cannot move, even if the local environment changes, and the water masses around them have travelled long distances and may include harmful substances from sources far away.
The status of pressures, species and habitats is influenced by multiple connections to human activities. Understanding these linkages also helps reveal important knowledge gaps for setting management targets and helps us to better understand how human activities depend upon, and benefit from, marine ecosystem services.
Salmon eggs hatch in rivers with outflows into the Baltic Sea and spend the first parts of their lifecycle there, feeding on invertebrates and being dependent on the river water environment. After one or two years they grow into so called smolt and migrate to the Baltic Sea, where they mature into adult salmon and remain for a few years.
During this time, a salmon may migrate hundreds of kilometres and encounter many different environments before returning to the river to spawn. Its health and survival is influenced by food availability, fishing pressures, and potentially also underwater sound, marine litter and the quality of available food, and it is dependent as well on the environmental quality of their spawning rivers. Photo: Esa Lehtinen. Bladderwrack is an important habitat-forming seaweed which colonises hard substrates in the Baltic Sea.
In other seas it lives in the intertidal zone, but in the Baltic Sea it lives continuously submerged. Many small animals thrive among the structures formed by the seaweed, and it is a productive environment for small fish and benthic species. These small animals are also important for keeping the seaweed clean. The bladderwrack lives attached to the rock or other hard substrate all its life. It is sensitive to the quality of the surrounding water and hence eutrophication or changes in the food web can be damaging.
When food webs are disturbed, due to a decrease of big predatory fish for example, this may also affect the number of small animals among the seaweed and the quality of this habitat. Photo: Nicklas Wijkmark. Oxygen conditions in the deep water have been improved by a series of inflow events since the end of A series of smaller inflow events occurred in November , December , and March These interacted positively and reached the deep water of the central Baltic Sea for the first time since Naumann and Nausch A Major Baltic Inflow of moderate intensity also occurred between 14 and 22 November , followed by a third moderate Major Baltic Inflow between 31 January and 6 February Feistel et al.
These events caused intensified oxygen dynamics in the Arkona Basin, Bornholm Basin, and Eastern Gotland Basin, and the northern Baltic Proper was affected up to the end of As a result, the near bottom oxygen concentrations in the Bornholm deep ranged from 0. In the Gotland deep, where hydrogen sulphide was present in concentrations corresponding to a negative oxygen content of Maximum ventilation occurred in May The major Baltic inflow of December caused the Bornholm Basin to become fully ventilated.
Hydrogen sulphide was absent in the Gdansk Basin and Eastern Gotland Basin, and the former anoxic bottom water was replaced see Figure 1. The recent inflows have reduced the large pool of hydrogen sulphide that was present in the Eastern and Northern Gotland Basin.
However, oxygen concentrations in the deep water are near zero below the permanent stratification and conditions near the bottom have become increasingly anoxic during There are signs of increasing amounts of hydrogen sulphide in the Eastern and Northern Gotland Basins close to the bottom.
In order to prevent further deterioration of the oxygen situation, with the formation of hydrogen sulphide concentrations, new major inflows are needed Hansson et al. Within a changing climate this assumption will not hold, as the physical environment is also changing and will feedback upon the biogeochemical cycling, for example by enhancing growth and mineralization rates. Simulations also indicate that climate change may call for additional nutrient input reductions to reach the targets for good environmental status of the Baltic Sea Action Plan Meier et al.
Eutrophication causes many adverse effects on the marine environment which also reduce the welfare of citizens. The management of the Baltic Sea eutrophication has been advanced with the Baltic Sea Action Plan HELCOM , which includes a complete management cycle aiming for specified improved conditions in the Baltic Sea, based on the best available scientific information and a model-based decision support system.
Core indicators with associated threshold values representing good status with regard to eutrophication are established primarily from monitoring data, which is interpreted through statistical analysis.
Drowning in fishing gear is believed to be a strong pressure on the populations of divers, grebes, cormorants, alcids, mergansers and ducks, especially in wintering areas with high densities of waterbirds. Diving waterbirds are especially vulnerable to being entangled in gill nets and other types of nets, but incidental by-catches also occur in other types of fishing gear, such as longlines and traps ICES b.
Beside the assessment of incidental by-catch, the hunting bag see Chapter 4. Drowning in fishing gear is believed to be the greatest source of mortality for harbour porpoise populations in the Baltic Sea, and is also a concern for seals Core indicator report: HELCOM ae. Incidental by-catches of harbour porpoise in the Kattegat and Belts Seas were calculated at to animals in , based primarily on information from CCTV cameras on commercial vessels in combination with data on fishing effort ICES e.
The numbers are however associated with high uncertainties, concerning both incidental by-catch numbers and estimates of fishing effort. Documentation of incidental by-catch of harbour porpoise in the Baltic Proper is only fragmented, typically amounting to a few animals per year from the countries reporting. Based on interviews with fishermen from Sweden, Finland and Estonia, and accounting for the variability in seal abundance and fishing effort, and also for underreporting, the annual incidental by-catch of grey seals in trap nets and gill nets in these countries were estimated at around 2 to 2 individual seals in Vanhatalo et al.
Population trends and abundance of seals : In order to have good status the population size needs to be above the limit reference level 10 individuals , and the species specific growth rate needs to be achieved. Seals are counted as the numbers of hauled-out individuals during moult. Distribution of seals : Considering the occurrence at haul-out sites and the range of seals at sea, good status is achieved when the distribution of the species is close to pristine condition.
If pristine conditions cannot be achieved due to irreversible long-term environmental changes, then good status is achieved when all currently available haul-out sites are occupied. Nutritional status of seals : The core indicator is applied on grey seal, and evaluates the blubber thickness of a specimen of the population in relation to a defined minimum threshold value.
Reproductive status : Measures the proportion of pregnant adult grey seal females over the age of 6 years during July to February in relation to a minimum threshold value. Further, HELCOM is developing indicators on harbour porpoise abundance and distribution and number of drowned animals caught in fishing gear but at present there are no defined threshold levels against which the status can be assessed Box 5.
HELCOM is also aiming to develop health indicators for mammals, based on lung lesions caused by parasites and bacteria in harbour porpoise and harbour seals, and infections and ulcerations to the small intestine for grey seals. More details on the core indicator concepts and how threshold values have been defined can be found in the core indicator report. Historically, eel Anguilla anguilla has been a common species across the Baltic Sea, occurring even in the far north.
The main concern regarding eel is its sharply decreased recruitment since the s Moriarty and Dekker , ICES A decreasing trend has probably been present even longer Dekker and Beaulaton The cause of recent changes may be a combination of factors such as overfishing, inland habitat loss and degradation, mortality in hydropower turbines, contaminants, parasites and climatic changes in the spawning area Moriarty and Dekker , ICES d.
In the Baltic Sea, there is a decreasing number of licensed fishermen targeting eel, and there have been efforts to ban recreational fishing and to decrease the number of licensed fishers ICES d.
The status of the eel stock has been poorly documented until recently, with incomplete catch statistic being one issue. Indications are that the eel in the Baltic Sea constitutes about a quarter of the total population of European eel today. The required minimum protection has not yet been achieved, and although eel management plans are being established on national level, no joint management and assessment actions have been achieved.
The Baltic Sea impact index uses sensitivity scores based on a regional scale expert survey in order to cover a broad range of topics in a similar way and makes use of existing expertise on the different ways in which pressures may impact the environment. Dredging activities bury seagrass and consequently have a direct impact. Some antifouling additives from ship coating reduces the photosynthetic efficiency of seagrass.
The dredging effects caused by fisheries activities may lead to decline of blue mussel by removal of species and abrasion of the seabed. The following activities were considered in the assessment as causing loss of seabed: construction at sea and on the shoreline also including cables and pipelines, marinas and harbours, land claim, and mariculture , sand and gravel extraction, dredging, and disposal of dredged matter Figure 4.
The same activities as in the assessment of physical loss were considered in the assessment as causing physical disturbance acting via the pressures of siltation, smothering, and abrasion , and in addition shipping and trawling were included as potentially causing physical disturbance Figure 4.
The potential extent of loss and disturbance to the seabed was estimated by identifying the spatial distribution of human activities exerting these pressures. The extent of pressures was estimated based on the information from the literature, and the data sets were aggregated into two layers representing physical loss and physical disturbance, respectively. The aggregated layers were also compared with information on the spatial distribution of broad benthic habitat types, in order to estimate the potentially lost and disturbed area of benthic habitats Supplementary report: HELCOM D.
Therefore the potential loss and disturbance can be underestimated in some sub-basins due to lack of data of specific pressures. It has been agreed to further consider the application of e. Cod is mainly fished by demersal trawls reaching the seabed.
Pelagic commercial species are almost exclusively sprat and herring, and are mainly fished by pelagic trawls, in the water column. Salmon is caught by long lines during its feeding stage in the sea, or by trap nets or gill nets during their spawning run, and salmon fishing is also sometimes allowed in river mouths. A variety of species are targeted, depending on season and availability, including herring, cod and flounder and coastal freshwater species. The main source of pharmaceuticals to the Baltic Sea come from humans and animals, via urine and faeces, as well as the inappropriate disposal of unused medical products into sewers.
Municipal wastewater treatment plants are considered a major pathway for introduction to the aquatic environment, with an estimated release of about 1.
The fate and impacts of those pharmaceuticals in the environment is still largely unknown. The most frequently detected substances belong to the therapeutic groups of anti-inflammatory and analgesics, cardiovascular and central nervous system agents.
In biota, the largest number of different pharmaceutical substances and the highest concentrations were found in blue mussels. The antibiotic claritromycin was detected in two out of water samples and on one occasion in biota. Out of water, sediment and biota samples, the hormones estradiol and 17a-ethinylestradiol were detected in three water samples. However, in many cases the analytical level of detection of the methods were not sensitive enough to give a result.
HELCOM aims to develop core indicators for diclofenac concentration and estrogenic-like chemicals and effects. Values for sediments are not published there, but can be found in the EQS substance dossiers. Below this level, it is assumed that no harm will be caused to the freshwater or marine environment. Environmental quality standard values for water are used as threshold values in the core indicators for some substances.
In these cases, the value relating to an annual average concentration is used. Monitoring in water can be challenging as the concentrations can be several orders of magnitude below the analytical detection limit.
When measurements in biota are used, different trophic levels of the foodweb are analysed depending on the substance for example, mussels or predatory fish are used , and different parts of the fish for example fish muscle or measurements on the whole fish. Hence, the measured concentrations often need to be converted in order to conform to the environmental quality standard biota-value, which may introduce uncertainties.
A QS value can be used for the assessment provided that it corresponds to at least the same level of protection as the environmental quality standard. The value for the most sensitive of these matrices and protection goals is used. Background assessment criteria have been developed by OSPAR and ICES to define the background concentrations of naturally occurring substances, and close to zero concentrations for man-made substances.
The defined values do not take ecotoxicological aspects into consideration. Hence, the approach is different to the derivation of the environmental quality standard values, which aims to relate to risks for adverse effects. If a background assessment criterion is used as a threshold value, this can be considered a more cautious assessment compared an environmental quality standard.
Values based on background assessment criteria are currently not available for the HELCOM region, but could be calculated in future work. Foodstuff threshold values stem from legislation of the European Union EC They are derived taking into consideration information beyond the environmental parameters, such as dietary standards of the concerned human population, typical levels of contaminants in different foodstuff, and trade.
Geographical, hydrological and biological features of the Baltic Sea and its river basins make them very sensitive to threats such as pollution and unsustainable use of natural resources. In the past, human activities have increasingly influenced the Baltic Sea and its ecology, in particular over the past two centuries during which the population has increased and agricultural and industrial activities have intensified. The impacts caused by climate change add to these threats and are projected to jeopardise the integrity of the ecosystem and increase risks caused by natural disasters.
The BSR countries have to face the challenges of climate change and its regional and local impacts. A restaurant owner from northeastern Germany has made it into the record books with his kilogram herring salad bowl. It's not the first time he's broken records with his oversized traditional dishes. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania attracts with its wide open spaces and untouched nature.
The white sandy beaches of the Baltic Sea coast and the more than 1, lakes magically attract vacationers. Local police say a large waterspout made landfall in the Baltic Sea city damaging property and throwing several people into the water. Emergency and rescue services are on the scene. Once operational, the pipeline will roughly double Russian oil giant Gazprom's capacity to move gas through the Baltic Sea to Europe, bypassing transit states such as Ukraine.
Engineers have welded together the final piece of piping of the controversial conduit, operators say. Gas supply to Germany is expected to begin in October. The completion of the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline and the ambitious climate goals of the European Union offer Ukraine an opportunity to reduce its energy dependence on Russia, says Oliver Rolofs. A Danish man, known only as Herman H, has been acquitted of charges of murder and attempted murder.
He was accused of killing a German backpacker on a Baltic Sea ferry 34 years ago. A report that German submarines are navigating the globe with Russian hardware has sparked security concerns. With a total length of km, Vistula is the largest and longest river in Poland. The total area of the basin formed by the river is , km 2 , the majority of which is in Poland , km 2.
However, minor tributaries forming the drainage basin exist in Belarus, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The source of Vistula is the Barania Gora, which is located in southern Poland.
The basin is shared by Russia, which is the source of Daugava, and Latvia. The Daugava has a total length of km. The Neman is the fourth largest river draining into the Baltic Sea. The 98, km 2 basin is shared by Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia.
The source of the Neman is located in Belarus, and the river then flows through Lithuania, before emptying its waters into the Curonian Lagoon, and then finally into the Baltic Sea at Klaipeda. The 51, km 2 basin formed by the Kemijoki is co-owned by Finland and Norway, which is the source of the river. With a length of km, Kemijoki is the longest river in Finland.
The river passes through Kemijarvi and Rovaniemi, which is where the the Kemijoki merges with the Ounasjoki River. The North Atlantic Oscillation system influences the major air pressure system, which eventually affects the precipitation and atmospheric circulation.
The Baltic Sea basin experiences two main types of climate. The southern part experiences a marine west coast climate, where wind transports moisture from the ocean, which interacts with the warm ocean currents to provide moist and mild winter. The northern and middle regions experience temperate climates, characterized by long, cold winters, with temperatures dropping to below -3 degrees Celsius.
The water temperature also varies with location, depth, and season. The water temperature around Bornholm Bay falls to degrees Celsius during winter and rise to degrees Celsius during summer. Since , the Baltic Sea has frozen entirely about 20 times, with the recent total freezing reported in The Baltic Sea is home to over 20 islands and archipelagos.
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