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An historic fishery collapse driven by socioeconomic and environmental factors
For nearly 300 years (1280–1570), the western Baltic herring fishery, located in a small sound area between Denmark and Sweden (Sound fishery; Supplementary Fig. 1) was the main producer of salted herring in Europe1. From the British Isles to Middle and Eastern Europe and all the way to Northern Italy, western Baltic herring was traded. During the autumn fishing season (15 August to 9 October), fairs held near small towns became important centres of commerce. A time series of herring catches in the western Baltic Sea has been reconstructed by ref. 1 from fragmentary historical evidence by combining direct records with indirect economic and environmental indicators. Where available, the authors relied on concrete data from customs records, toll books, royal pre-emption (kongekøb) accounts and other archival sources that reported trade volumes for specific years and locations (see Supplementary Information for a detailed description of the creation of the time series in English language; the original publication is in German). According to the authors, the Sound fishery can roughly be described by four phases, which show some peculiar similarities to the progression of events that led to collapses in modern fisheries (for example, the Atlantic northwest cod fishery): (1) expansion, (2)...
