The authors thank the Nordic Working Group for Oceans and Coastal Areas (NHK) at the Nordic Council of Ministers for funding the project. We also want to thank the European Union project EMERGE (Evaluation, control and Mitigation of the EnviRonmental impacts of shipping Emissions) for providing us with scrubber water and analytical data for the fuel oil for one of the ships included in the study (vessel 2), and professor Ketil Hylland, University of Oslo, for valuable comments on the manuscript. Chiau Yu Chen has kindly allowed us to use her very informative image on shipping lanes and spawning and nursery areas for cod in the Baltic Proper (figure 11).