Latest news with #BalticSea
Times
15 hours ago
- Business
- Times
Oresund Bridge is £58 to cross. Is the toll just daylight robbery?
For four centuries the Oresund, a strait between Denmark and Sweden that is the gateway to the Baltic Sea, was a geopolitical chokepoint. The Danish kings would routinely top up their treasury by extorting transit fees from passing ships. In 1658 the Swedes got their own back by crossing the frozen waters and surrounding Copenhagen. Urban legend holds that there is still a law on Denmark's statute books that permits loyal Danes to take up a cudgel and bash any Swede attempting to traverse the ice. The sound last became passable on foot in 1996 but no heads were staved in. Four years after that, though, Sweden and Denmark opened a five-mile, €2.6 billion bridge across the strait, whose 25th birthday falls on Tuesday. The kings and queens of both countries will mark the occasion by travelling in a convoy from the Swedish side to the Danish one, pausing halfway on the island of Peberholm. The bridge has become a symbol of European integration, all but turning Copenhagen and the Swedish port of Malmo on the other side of the water into a single conurbation. 'There is a before and after the bridge,' said Linus Eriksson, the chief executive of the company that runs it. 'Before the bridge, Malmo was a town in crisis. Even Copenhagen had a tough situation. Both cities had a tough situation with poor growth. Now it's a totally different region economically.' The crossing was also made famous from Tijuana to Bulawayo by The Bridge, a noirish crime drama in which a chilly Swedish detective called Saga Noren and her Danish partner Martin Rohde solved a series of grisly trans-strait murders. Now, however, many commuters who bought into the dream of living in one country and working in the other are complaining of what they regard as a lower-level but higher-volume crime: daylight robbery. • How Swedish gangs are exporting young contract killers across Scandinavia Weeks before the anniversary, the basic price for a one-way car journey across the bridge has been jacked up to 510 Danish kroner, or £58. For the largest vans, it is the equivalent of £218. Research by Sydsvenskan, a regional newspaper in southern Sweden, suggests this is by far the most expensive bridge toll on the planet, costing about twice as much as its nearest rivals in Japan and Canada. Tommy Frandsen, a Danish warehouse manager, is the embodiment of the Oresund ideal. He lives in Staffanstorp, a Swedish town 12 miles from the bridge, and commutes across it every weekday to his workplace on the Danish side. Even though he gets a reduced rate, this now costs him nearly £350 a month, or slightly more than 10 per cent of his salary after tax. 'I feel like it's terrible because they raise the prices every year,' Frandsen said. 'The ferry is not an option. The train is not a possibility because I live out in the country and there's no trains from here.' Aravin Chakravarthi, who is based in Malmo but works in Hedehusene, Denmark, said he could not afford to traverse the bridge by car and was forced to take longer rail journeys instead. 'I don't drive by car because of the bridge toll, even on desperate days when I'm juggling tight schedules to drop off or pick up my two kids,' he said. Although the bridge consortium is jointly owned by the Swedish and Danish states, it is financed with sizeable loans, which have to be paid back. The toll is also linked by law to the cost of the privately operated ferry that runs between Helsingor and Helsingborg further up the strait, to protect the commercial viability of the latter. 'We are state-owned, so we would not be able to cut the price by half because then the commercially operated ferry company would complain or even sue us,' said Eriksson. Despite the vehicle toll, the total number of people crossing the Oresund by car, train or ferry hit a record 38 million last year, equivalent to about 105,000 trips a day. A one-way railway journey between central Copenhagen and Malmo typically costs only £13. Locals' sentimental attachment to the bridge remains largely undiminished. 'It has created love relationships. It has created party culture and university research,' said Niels Paarup-Petersen, a Swedish Centre Party MP from Malmo. 'There are such gains that have actually become a reality because of the bridge.'
New York Times
a day ago
- Science
- New York Times
Honey, We Shrunk the Cod
Call it the case of the incredible shrinking cod. Thirty years ago, the cod that swam in the Baltic Sea were brag-worthy, with fishing boats hauling in fish the size of human toddlers. Today, such behemoths are vanishingly rare. A typical Eastern Baltic cod could easily fit in someone's cupped hands. Experts have suspected that commercial fishing might be to blame. For years, the cod were intensely harvested, caught in enormous trawl nets. The smallest cod could wriggle their way out of danger, while the biggest, heaviest specimens were continually removed from the sea. One simple explanation for the phenomenon, then, was that the fish were not actually shrinking: Rather, they were simply eliminated as soon as they grew big enough to be caught. But a new study suggests that intense fishing was driving the evolution of the fish. Small, slow-growing cod gained a significant survival advantage, shifting the population toward fish that were genetically predisposed to remaining small. Today's cod are small not because the big individuals are fished out but because the fish no longer grow big. The data, which were published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, add to a growing body of evidence that human activities like hunting and fishing are driving the evolution of wild animals — sometimes at lightning speed. 'Human harvesting elicits the strongest selection pressures in nature,' said Thorsten Reusch, a marine ecologist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany and an author of the new paper. 'It can be really fast that you see evolutionary change.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Science
- The Independent
What over-fishing has done to the size of cod in just 30 years
Excessive fishing has caused Baltic cod to undergo genetic changes, halving their size over the past 30 years. A study published in Science Advances is the first to demonstrate that decades of overfishing and environmental changes can profoundly alter the genetic makeup of a fully marine species. Researchers found a 48 per cent decrease in the asymptotic body length of Eastern Baltic cod between 1996 and 2019, with genetic variations indicating evolution driven by human interference. The study revealed that the genomes of fast-growing cod systematically differed from slow growers, with fast-growing individuals nearly disappearing from the Baltic Sea. This phenomenon is described as evolution in action driven by human activity, where the consistent removal of larger fish gives smaller, faster-maturing fish an evolutionary advantage.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Science
- Telegraph
The fish that is getting smaller to slip through nets
The average size of eastern Baltic cod is shrinking as a result of overfishing, scientists have claimed. The fish are thought to have evolved to slip through nets, according to a study which directly links human influence to changes in their DNA. The research, published in the Science Advances journal, also blamed decades of overfishing for the dwindling numbers of the species. 'When the largest individuals are consistently removed from the population over many years, smaller, faster-maturing fish gain an evolutionary advantage,' said Prof Thorsten Reusch, senior author of the study and head of the marine ecology research division at Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. 'What we are observing is evolution in action, driven by human activity. This is scientifically fascinating, but ecologically deeply concerning.' Researchers examined tiny ear bones, called otoliths, of 152 cod caught in the Baltic Sea's Bornholm Basin between 1996 and 2019. The otoliths record annual growth, similar to tree rings, and showed the genomes of fast-growing cod had nearly disappeared, while slower-growing, smaller fish had a higher survival rate. Overall, the average body length of the fish had roughly halved from 40cm to around 20cm since the 1990s. Dr Kwi Young Han, a biologist and first author of the study, said: 'For the first time in a fully marine species, we have provided evidence of evolutionary changes in the genomes of a fish population subjected to intense exploitation, which has pushed the population to the brink of collapse.' The EU banned the fishing of eastern Baltic cod in 2019 following years of period of overfishing. However, scientists warned its population may never fully recover. Prof Reusch said: 'Evolutionary change unfolds over many generations. Recovery takes far longer than decline, and it may not even be possible… despite the fishing ban, there's no sign of a rebound in body size.' Dr Han added: 'Our results demonstrate the profound impact of human activities on wild populations, even at the level of their DNA. 'They also highlight that sustainable fisheries are not only an economic issue, but also a matter of conserving biodiversity, including genetic resources.'
The Independent
2 days ago
- Science
- The Independent
Humans have forced cod to shrink in size by half since 1990s, scientists find
Excessive fishing has forced Baltic cod to undergo genetic changes that have halved their size over the past 30 years, a new study has found. The research, published in the journal Science Advances, is the first to show that decades of overfishing and environmental change can profoundly alter the genetic make-up of a fully marine species. Baltic cod once measured more than a meter long and weighed up to 40kg, forming the backbone of the region's fishery. In the last three decades, however, the species has shrunk so much that even a full-grown cod can fit neatly on a dinner plate. 'For the first time in a fully marine species, we have provided evidence of evolutionary changes in the genomes of a fish population subjected to intense exploitation, which has pushed the population to the brink of collapse,' lead author Kwi Young Han said. Researchers examined an archive of ear stones from 152 overexploited Eastern Baltic cod, Gadus morhua, caught in the Bornholm Basin between 1996 and 2019. The ear stones record annual growth in some fish species, similar to tree rings, making them valuable timekeepers. They specifically looked into the growth trends of the cod over 25 years of heavy fishing and compared the changes with genetic alterations found in the species at the full genome level. The study revealed a '48 per cent decrease in asymptotic body length' of the cod from 1996 to 2019, with indications that the species had evolved due to human interference. Genetic variations in the cod associated with body growth showed signs of 'directional selection', researchers pointed out. Some structural changes in the genome seemed to indicate environmental adaptation, hinting the "shrinking" had a genetic basis tied to human activity. "Selective overexploitation has altered the genome of Eastern Baltic cod," Dr Han explained. "We see this in the significant decline in average size, which we could link to reduced growth rates.' The study found the genomes of fast-growing cod differed systematically from slow growers, with the fast growers nearly disappearing from the Baltic. "When the largest individuals are consistently removed from the population over many years, smaller, faster-maturing fish gain an evolutionary advantage," Thorsten Reusch, another author of the study, said. "What we're observing is evolution in action, driven by human activity. This is scientifically fascinating, but ecologically deeply concerning.' The new research calls for conservation policies to look into the adaptive potential of marine species.
