Commercial marine fishery 2020 (preliminary)

According to preliminary estimates, Finland’s commercial marine fishermen caught a total of 112 million kilos of fish in 2020.
A total of 92 million kilos of Baltic herring and 12 million kilos of sprat were caught. The Baltic herring catch decreased by 20 million kilos and the sprat catch by 4 million kilos from the previous year.
The Baltic herring and sprat catches, mainly caught from the open sea by the trawler fleet, contained 93% of the total commercial marine catch. One fifth of the Baltic herring catch and a little more than half of the sprat catch were landed outside Finland.
A total of 55 vessels deployed trawls, while some 1,250 vessels used other types of gear.
The majority of fishermen were operating in coastal areas and deployed trap nets and gillnets to catch, for example, perch, whitefish, pikeperch, salmon and pike.
Catches of smelt, bream and roach increased from the year before, being higher than on average in the 2000s, while catches of the commercially most significant species, such as European whitefish, perch, pikeperch and salmon, were low.
The number of active fishermen has more than halved from over 2,100 fishermen during the past ten years.