Coastal Fisheries in the Eastern Baltic Sea (Gulf of Finland) and Its Basin from the 15 to the Early 20Th Centuries

Coastal Fisheries in the Eastern Baltic Sea (Gulf of Finland) and Its Basin from the 15 to the Early 20th Centuries Julia Lajus1,2, Alexei Kraikovski2, Dmitry Lajus3* 1 National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2 European University at St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia, 3 St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia Abstract The paper describes and analyzes original data, extracted from historical documents and scientific surveys, related to Russian fisheries in the southeastern part of the Gulf of Finland and its inflowing rivers during the 15- early 20th centuries. The data allow tracing key trends in fisheries development and in the abundance of major commercial species. In particular, results showed that, over time, the main fishing areas moved from the middle part of rivers downstream towards and onto the coastal sea. Changes in fishing patterns were closely interrelated with changes in the abundance of exploited fish. Anadromous species, such as Atlantic sturgeon, Atlantic salmon, brown trout, whitefish, vimba bream, smelt, lamprey, and catadromous eel were the most important commercial fish in the area because they were abundant, had high commercial value and were easily available for fishing in rivers. Due to intensive exploitation and other human-induced factors, populations of most of these species had declined notably by the early 20th century and have now lost commercial significance. The last sturgeon was caught in 1996, and today only smelt and lamprey support small commercial fisheries. According to historical sources, catches of freshwater species such as roach, ide, pike, perch, ruffe and burbot regularly occurred, in some areas exceeding half of the total catch, but they were not as important as migrating fish and no clear trends in abundance are apparent. Of documented marine catch, Baltic herring appeared in the 16th century, but did not become commercially significant until the 19th century. From then until now herring have been the dominant catch. Citation: Lajus J, Kraikovski A, Lajus D (2013) Coastal Fisheries in the Eastern Baltic Sea (Gulf of Finland) and Its Basin from the 15 to the Early 20th Centuries. PLoS ONE 8(10): e77059. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077059 Editor: Sebastian C. A. Ferse, Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology, Germany Received March 31, 2013; Accepted August 29, 2013; Published October 24, 2013 Copyright: ß 2013 Lajus et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This research was supported by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (United States of America), Census of Marine Life, History of Marine Animal Populations Programme, which also provided publication fees, and a grant from Russian Foundation for Basic Research 10-04-91005-ANF_a. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: [email protected] Introduction has the history of these changes been studied [4–8]. Continued investigations are essential for drawing a more comprehensive The study of fisheries history may provide information that is picture of the history of the Baltic Sea ecosystem, especially since key to understanding the history of aquatic ecosystems and to most research has covered only part of it. In particular, few studies identifying and quantifying factors that affect populations of have examined the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea – the Gulf of particular species [1,2] Fisheries data usually appear much earlier Finland – which is the focus of this research. than other ecosystem data. Thus, they allow us to examine Bordered by Finland, Russia and Estonia, the Gulf of Finland is conditions that predate global changes caused by human activities, a shallow arm intruding inland from the Baltic’s eastern shore. It is and also reveal centennial-scale fluctuations in biota. Such frozen from December to March. The Neva River, by far the information may be useful for ecosystem management because it largest river flowing into the Baltic Sea (average annual discharge allows to estimate carrying capacity of ecosystems in times when is 2500 m3/s), causes very low water salinity in the eastern part of anthropogenic pressure was weaker than now, and to obtain the Gulf between the Neva Estuary and Kotlin Island. This information on the historical distribution of species. Historical data shallow water area is called Neva Bay or the Marquis’s Pool. In are often inconsistent, which causes serious difficulties when 2011 it was separated from the rest of the Gulf of Finland by the applying formal analytical methods, in particular, statistics. Due to St. Petersburg Dam. Due to its very low salinity, the fish fauna of this such data are not always fully taken into account. Ignoring Neva Bay is the same as in the Neva River. Salinity of the Gulf of anecdotal historical data may result in the ‘‘shifting baseline Finland increases westwards but is still rather low (up to 6–7 ppm) syndrome’’ [3], an underestimation of population abundance in near the western border of Russia [9]. The salinity gradient periods prior to official fisheries statistics that should be taken into determines fish distribution: only freshwater and migrating species consideration in the management of natural resources. are found in the eastern part, with marine species appearing in the Humans inhabited the Baltic Sea basin for millennia, and western part of the Gulf. The relatively large Narva and Luga fishing has always been important. Over time, this ecosystem has Rivers (discharge 399 and 93 m3/s respectively) flow into Narva experienced drastic anthropogenic changes, but only very recently and Luga Bays in the southwestern part of the Gulf of Finland. PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 October 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 10 | e77059 Historical Fisheries in Gulf of Finland Figure 1. Site map of area where historical datasets on Russian fisheries were obtained. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077059.g001 There are also several smaller rivers flowing into Koporye Bay for documents from many nations to create a comprehensive history which historical fishery information is available (Fig. 1). of fisheries in that region. Data for this study were extracted from The eastern part of the Baltic has belonged to Russia since the historical Russian sources such as cadastres (scribe books) and Middle Ages. This territory was controlled by the Great Novgorod cadastre-like documents, accounting books, statistical documents, and then by the Russian State until it was temporarily conquered published reports and scientific papers found in the following by Sweden in the early 17th century. A hundred years later Peter archives: the Russian State Archives of Ancient Documents the Great put the area once more under the control of the Russian (RGADA), the Central Historical Archives of St. Petersburg Empire. Fisheries in the eastern Baltic Sea and its basin have (CGIA SPb), and the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archives of the existed since ancient times and were always an important source of Russian Academy of Sciences (PFA RAN). food and income. In some settlements professional fishermen Cadastres were the principal tax documents recording all constituted a large proportion of the population: the town of taxable economic activities and describing each district village by th Oreshek on the upper stream of the Neva River in the 16 century village. Every farm bore the name of its owner, and a description [10], and the village of Rybatskoe on the middle stream of the of arable lands and fisheries was provided. Since the 19th century th Neva River in the 18–19 centuries [11] are two examples. At the historians have used this detailed information to create a general same time, fisheries in this region did not play as important a role picture of local and regional economy in the 16th and 17th in the economy as they did in the Russian North [12–15]. Most centuries. fish products from the eastern Baltic Sea and basin were Scientists have expressed an interest in the fishes and fisheries of distributed within the region. Except for lamprey Lampetra the region since the second half of the 19th century. Among them fluviatilus, few species are known to have had wider Russian or were well-known biologists such as Karl Kessler, Nikolai international markets [16]. th Danilevsky and Oscar Grimm, whose works are cited in this Early descriptions of the fisheries since the end of the 15 paper. The first comprehensive fisheries survey in the St. century report a domination of inshore fisheries. By the second Petersburg region was carried out in 1876–77 by the St. half of the 20th century, however, fishing techniques changed Petersburg Statistical Committee (CGIA SPb, coll. 260, inv. 2, f. dramatically and fisheries moved offshore. Therefore fisheries in 6). Collecting statistical fisheries data had already begun in other the area underwent considerable changes during the last several parts of Russia, for instance, in the Russian North where the centuries. The main goal of this study was to trace major trends in Arkhangelsk Statistical Committee began data collection in 1872 development of Russian fisheries and long-term changes in the [11]. However, in the St. Petersburg region this initiative was abundance of key commercial species in the eastern part of the abandoned and catch data were not published, although the Gulf of Finland. The analysis is based on original archival sources numbers of fishermen and fishing income appeared in a and historical documents new to the literature on fish biology. Making these data available improves historical time series and multivolume edition on the demographic statistics of the St.

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