Commercial marine fishery 2022 (preliminary)

According to preliminary estimates, Finland’s commercial marine fishermen caught a total of 88 million kilos of fish in 2022. It was nine million kilos less than in the year before.

• A total of 70 million kilos of Baltic herring and 13 million kilos of sprat were caught. The Baltic herring catch decreased by seven million kilos and the sprat catch by 1.3 million kilos from the previous year.
• The Baltic herring and sprat catches, mainly caught from the open sea by the trawler fleet, contained 95% of the total commercial marine catch.  One fifth of the Baltic herring catch and a half of the sprat catch were landed outside Finland.
• A total of 40 vessels deployed trawls, while over 900 fishermen 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, European whitefish, pike, pikeperch, bream, roach and salmon.
• Compared with average catches in the 2000s, the vendace, smelt, perch and burbot catches were higher last year. The catches of many other species fished in coastal areas were smaller than average. The European whitefish, pikeperch and salmon catches were half of the average catches in the 2000s, while the trout catch remained at one third.
• There were less than 1,000 active fishermen, more than half of the corresponding figure at the beginning of the 2000s.