Commercial marine fishery 2021

Fish and fishery

Statistics

Fishing vessels registered in Finland caught a total of 97 million kilos of fish in 2021. The total value of the catch was EUR 28 million.
The Baltic herring catch was 77 million kilos, also being the most valuable species in commercial marine fishery (EUR 16.7 million). Sprat was the second most important species measured by volume (15 million kilos) and value (EUR 2.8 million). The Baltic herring catch decreased by 16 million kilos and the sprat catch increased by 2 million kilos from the previous year.
The bulk of the catch was fished from the Bothnian Sea, while Finnish fishing vessels also operated throughout the Finnish coastline and in the southern Baltic Sea. A fifth of the catch was landed abroad, either in Estonia or Sweden. In Finland, the largest catch volumes were landed at the port of Kasnäs in Kimitoön. Outside Finland, the largest volumes were landed in Estonia at the southern port of Paldiski by the Gulf of Finland and in Sweden at the port of Norrsundet near Gävle.
In coastal fishing, the most valuable species was perch (0.7 million kilos), followed by European whitefish (0.3), salmon (0.2), pikeperch (0.2) and smelt (2.3). Catches of European whitefish, pikeperch and salmon were low compared with the long-term average (1980–2020), while perch and smelt had larger catches than normal.
Fishing days, calculated as the number of days multiplied by the quantity of gear, remained at the previous year’s level. During the 2000s, the number of trap fishing and trawling days has almost halved and that of gillnet fishing has decreased to one third, while that of hook and line fishing has decreased to a tenth.