Closing the net: Finland and Sweden join forces to fight illegal salmon fishing

Protecting the wild salmon in the Torne River — a natural border between Sweden and Finland — is an international effort, with fishery inspectors from both countries joining forces. The rivers in this area are one of Europe’s last refuges for wild salmon, making it crucial to keep fishing practices sustainable. Illegal activities like net fishing can put this delicate ecosystem at risk. That’s where the joint efforts of Swedish and Finnish inspectors come in.

In this interview, we talk with John Malmström, a Swedish fishery inspector who shares how he and his colleagues use drones and joint patrols to keep a close eye on the river, ensuring that salmon fishing stays within legal limits and the salmon population remains healthy.

John Malmström, Swedish fishery inspector

“We use the drone to inspect if we see something that shouldn’t be in the river. The drone is a very good equipment to quickly see what’s in the water.

We find nets a little bit here and there — people are quite clever, actually, when it comes to net fishing, yes!

We patrol together, one Finnish and one Swedish, mostly. And that is very important for us because the river is partly Finnish, partly Swedish. And because we are two countries in a boat, we don’t have to really matter which nationality a fisher has. So we can ask both the Swedish and the Finnish fishermen, and that helps us a lot.

We check a fishing license — they should have a fishing license with them. And, most of them luckily have [it].

We did about 900 inspections last year on the river, and 1% of them had some issue. So it is about 1% of the fishermen that, we inspect where we find something.

And, of course, we find during the summer a net or two, or some nets in the river — we pick them up and do a police report about this.”

Video editor • Jean-Christophe Marcaud