Fisheries Dynamics of the commercial fishery in the Baltic Sea: What are the driving forces?

Inversely to the relative stability of total fish landings from the Baltic Sea, the species composition of those has been rather variable over recent decades. The share of cod, reaching almost 50% in the early and mid-1980s has decreased to around 10% since then. At the same time, the share of sprat has demonstrated a tenfold increase, from 4-6% in 1979-1984 to 45-58% in 1996-2013 (Fig. 1).