Fishermen complaints
- Details
- Written by Jelena Belamarić
The reports of professional fishermen from Murter correspond with the results of the research of the Adriatic fish fauna made by experts from the oceanographic institute IZOR – the bottom fish has been severely depleted. The fishermen point out that besides overfishing, the mass tourism through building of touristic facilities and through recreational boat anchoring threatens the habitats and spawning grounds of many species. They also point out the fact that many species of sharks and rays almost disappeared as they get easily caught into the towing and trawl nets due to modernized fishing techniques, their slow growth and their late reproduction age.
Diminished size of the caught bottom fish is worrying because it threatens the fish reproduction; smaller individuals produce smaller quantity of eggs – if any. In an average catch there is an ever increasing number of individuals which have not yet reached their reproductive maturity.
Figure 1. The common scene on the Zagreb fish market: juvenile fish dominate in the overall offer of fish, the exception being only the fish produced on fish farms. On the photo: juvenile anglers Lophius piscatorius sold on Zagreb fish market every day.
Some of the baby anglers on the picture are smaller then minimum allowed catching size of 30 cm. On fish markets one can rarely see big anglers. I question the criteria used to define 30 cm as the minimum allowed catching and selling size for anglers – when it is known that a smallest reproductively mature female is at least 90 cm long and 7 years old, while a reproductive male can be a bit smaller and younger. In Croatian Red List of Marine Fish angler is defined as NT, nearly threatened. In many EU countries it is forbidden to fish anglers. Angler is also found on the Green Peace International Seafood Red List. The British marine scientists are worried about the future of angler populations because they are continuously finding less and less reproductive individuals, especially female.
This is not just the case with anglers but with a number of other commercial bottom fish. That threatens with a complete collapse of many fish populations because - where is are the next generations going to come from?
That may cause a total collapse of the fish populations because - where are the next generations going to come from?
The table shows chosen commercial species; their descriptive quantity status in the undersea ecosystems of Kornati archipelago and surrounding areas according to author's subjective estimate, and for the whole Croatian Adriatic according to Red List of Croatian Marine Fish. Author's estimate is based upon the relative frequency of encountering and size of the fish observed per a dive (in apnea and scuba) in Kornati underwater, as well as on the basis of observing the catch of Kornati "small scale" fishermen. The term "relative" means how frequently has a particular species been seen, and how much smaller the individual fish are - as compared with the seventies (please see the legend below the table). Considering the data in the table, one has to keep in mind that the state of fish populations in the National Park Kornati is known to be better then in a majority of other parts of Croatian Adriatic.
Neither of the descriptive estimates in the table shows the realistic enough state of the remaining fish stock in Kornati nor in the whole Adriatic for claiming anything - due to a lack of data. Besides, natural variations of quantity of certain fish in different parts of the Adriatic are significant – and the fish stock status changes continuously due to the influence of fishing.
Even if, in an unexpected case, the majority agrees with all the estimates presented in the table, these are only the descriptive ones – while we have only a very vague idea about the total fish stock or about the remaining size of each population in each area of the Croatian Adriatic. The exact fish stock in every moment and on every place is hardly ever going to be known exactly, but assumptions and guesses could be significantly reduced i.e. we could attain much more accurate, useful and workable picture of the state of the Adriatic fish stock of commercial species – if we had an efficient and all encompassing monitoring. We should agree that we shall not be able to manage the Adriatic fish stock sustainably – if we first do not know how much of "what, where and when" can be found.
Bottom Trawling – the most destructive fishing method
The bottom trawl net (together with its two robust spreading bars) bangs, scrapes, planes and ploughs the sea bottom, destroying everything on its way. The large majority of thus caught organisms are not edible or useable in any way and they do not survive - even if returned to the sea immediately. On the other hand, the large proportion of the edible catch must be thrown away due to the sad fact that most of individuals do not have a commercial size as well as that there is no market demand for some of the species. There is the growing amount of juvenile not yet sexually mature fish sold on Croatian fish markets - those tiny fish and shrimps which should not be fished or sold at all (Figure 1).
We do not have a clear and unambiguous directive regulating the size of the fish mesh "eyes", which would enable the juvenile fish to escape nor any consistent penalties for landing of the juvenile fish. However, the trawl fishermen believe that the uncontrolled size of the net meshes is not the main cause for the devastation caused by the bottom trawls and of other trawling problems. Two related things are to be blamed: far too intensive bottom trawling and/or far too many "Trawling concessions". Here is a concrete example in order to cover the expense of a single boat outing a fisherman nowadays has to haul the trawling net along the bottom for up to 8 hours (a side-effect being a significant mechanical damage to fish), compared to the former two-hour hauling. If the trawl advances about 2,5 nautical miles per hour, and an average trawl net ploughs at least 15m broad band of the bottom (without the spreading bars). This necessarily means that the surface of the ploughed bottom for a mere 50 kilos of commercial catch is terrifyingly big. It is hard to imagine to which extent the Adriatic trawling bottoms are literally tortured when we know that the very same trawling bottom gets ploughed several times in a single day. The fishermen from Murter (and their fishery inspector) point out that on the bottom of Murtersko more, there is enough fish and crustaceans for only ten bottom trawls – while there is about a hundred of them actively fishing there.
We should be aware that the capacity of a certain trawling bed for a number of trawlers which could be well supplied with fish of satisfactory size changes from one moment to the other depending on the extent of overfishing, season, meteorological conditions, part of the day etc. There is very little accurate data and knowledge on all of that – due to insufficient monitoring.
The fishermen from Murter report that in 1949 when they first started bottom trawling in the Adriatic on the deep sea beds in Blitvenica area they used to catch up to 900 kg of 1st and 2nd class scampi Nephrops norvegicus, plus a great quantity of sizable bottom fish in only 2-3 hours of hauling. By the end of the eighties, the bottom trawling catch plummeted. Again, in the time of the "accidental fishing closure" during the last war, the trawling catch in Blitvenica area increased again to about 700 kg of fish and scampi in a 2-3 hours long bottom trawling haul. After that war, the same area has been ravaged again. Indeed the trawling of the sea bed in a narrow circle of 3 nautical miles around the islet of Blitvenica has been banned. But most of the area around Blitvenica is still mercilessly trawled – and yields less and less. The same history applies to the volcanic islet of Jabuka. The golden age for the trawlers on the Croatian Adriatic is gone by the nineties - nowadays the trawling beds are overfished and the trawling fishermen are struggling.
On the other hand, some fishermen point out that the trawling beds which are regularly (and with measure) trawled produce a better commercial yield then the ones which are not trawled at all – perhaps due to oxidizing of the bottom by ploughing and due to liberating more food bits for the fish and crustaceans. But, as far as I know our scientists have yet to say their opinion on that particular view.
Some enthusiastic fishermen in the past delivered the non commercial edible catch to the producers of fish and livestock feed. However, the sorting, freezing and storing of that surplus, since it made the major part of the catch, required much more work and space then the sorting, freezing and storing of the fish good enough for the market, and the financial gain was negligible. That is the main reason for the majority of the fishermen not being motivated to deal with this (highly nutritious) "waste" anymore – they just throw it back to the sea.
The bottom trawling regulations are relatively simple – it is not allowed to trawl closer then a nautical mile distance from the closest coastal line (in NP Kornati that is 3 miles away from the outer islands but only during the summer). In channels between the mainland and the islands trawling is allowed only during winter months and only on certain days in the week.
Until recently there was a "loophole in the law"; use of mid-water (pelagic) trawl net was allowed everywhere any time. With some small adjustments the mid-water trawl net could be used as the bottom trawl net. Some fishermen with the mid-water trawl net concession did that and caused significant damage to some recovering sea beds forbidden for bottom trawling. That loophole in the law has been patched by allowing the mid-water trawlers to work only outside of the Croatian internal waters.
Many trawling fishermen gave up and their boats are deteriorating in the harbours, not going out to the sea anymore. But the number of those persistent ones is still far too big partly because they get an incentive payment ("poticaj") by a kilo of fish - so the trawling bottoms do not recover but degrade further. Banned trawling in Velebit channel threw the fishermen from island of Pag on their knees, and some of them claim that the very ban is to blame for the depletion of fish from those trawling bottoms. In the meantime, the inhabitants of the Prukljan lake desperately demand the ban of trawling in their sea, while certain touristic agencies invite companies for a trawling "team building experience" – even in Kornati archipelago. It seems that there is a growing anarchy in trawling of the Adriatic sea.
Seine fishing
The fishermen from Murter claim that the stock of small pelagic fish is also already going down, although much less then the bottom fish, but they disagree in this matter with the scientists from the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, IZOR, in Split. The reason for this decrease, they say, is the increased number of seiners with modern technical devices; extremely strong lights and hydraulic winches, so called Puretic power block. The old seiners were able to fish only on moonless nights and those much smaller nets were heaved by hand winches, usually only once a night. Modern seiners, because of those strong lights can fish even during a day and such a boat can take out a much bigger net - several times a night.
Thus, the stock of some of the small pelagic fish (for example sardines) is getting quite diminished, and the fishermen obtain more often a negligible catch compared to the one in the seventies. During a single night, on the outer side of Kornati islands one can see more then ten seiners and the horizon is alight more then from a big city. Some worried fishermen suggest that such extremely strong lights may confuse and scatter the fish, breaking the flocks and they perhaps could even negatively influence the fish reproduction. I am not aware that our scientists have expressed their opinion in this respect.
It could be expected that the stock of small pelagic fish is also not going to stay sufficiently big much longer with the same intensity of fishing. At the moment it is still profitable to fish for anchovies as there are enough of them for now and they export for a very good price. The tune fishing is unpredictable, they all agree upon that.
Sometimes, it could be heard in the media that a fishermen landed an amazing catch but he was forced to throw the large part of it away due to a lack of the refrigerating capacity of the buy-out centres or because those centres didn’t work. It is the sad fact that quite a few of our fish processing factories along the coast and on islands stagnated or died out, our fish is exported while we eat imported processed fish.
In a few years we shall reach the same point with seine fishing as that in which we are now with the bottom trawlers - if we continue with the same fishing pressure.
Merciless rule – unsustainable fisheries
The issues mentioned above confirm the worldwide mathematical rule in development of fisheries: the process of growth of the fishery fleet and the development of the fishing techniques in a chosen area is, typically, accompanied by an inverse proportional drop of the fish stock, as it could be seen on the generalized graph on Figure 2
Following the critical point, no matter how perfected the fishing accessories are, the size of the catch will start to fall and the whole fisheries to stagnate. When the expenses of the boat outings and the boat maintenance stay repeatedly uncovered by the income from the catch, the fishing in that area is going to dwindle. That happened or is happening in many seas – the same as with our bottom trawling.
With the small pelagic fish fishing we are just on a right track to experience the same phenomena again.
It seems that due to all those circumstances the following "logic" prevails nowadays among fishermen on our Adriatic: I do agree that it is not OK to catch greedily and to catch too small fish, and I can see that there is no future for Adriatic fisheries if we continue like that – thus it is better that I take as much as I can now when there is still some fish left – because if I don’t do it - the others will.
Fishing Concessions, Allocations and Permits
The number of the "Concessions for the economic activity of fishing" (for professional fishing) and of Allocations for the "small scale fishing" (only for personal needs) had been limited as late as in 2008. At the moment there are altogether about 3600 of those Concessions.
A huge problem of our fisheries in the last decade is too big a number of existing active Concessions for bottom trawling - about 1200 of them. The only way for the trawling beds to recover to a normal state would be to significantly decrease the number of active trawlers on our Adriatic.
The decrease of the number of the trawling concessions could be realized in two ways: The first would be to prevent the inheritance of the concession within a family or the possibility of its selling to another fishermen, so that many of the concessions would close when their owners retire. The other way would be to motivate the younger fishermen to give up their trawling concession in exchange for the sufficient funds received from the government, so that they can have enough money (combined with the finances from selling of their boat) to invest into something else and start a new life – as it is already done in Italy.
The number of the permits for the sport fishing (angling and underwater spear-gun hunting) and of the permits for the recreational fishing (angling and coops) has never been limited and it is growing consistently.
The fish should be allowed to be sold only by those with the professional concession – but it is being sold by many others, especially during the touristic season when there is a great demand for fish in restaurants. Fortunately it is expected that the new fishery law will be more strict and consistent with such illegal selling of fish.
In practice - out there on the blue Adriatic - everybody can fish where, how and how much they wish, with a yearly compensation of only 500 HRK. In those permits the minimal size of each fish species is defined, as well as the maximal size of the catch of 5kg (only in NP Kornati 7kg(!) - but did anyone ever hear that there was some serious control of the size in and of the catch or that somebody faced some consequences because of an inappropriate catch?
The fact that those in possession of the allocation for the small scale fishing are allowed to use the shore trawl is quite shocking as that type of fishing devastates many spawning grounds, such as it happened in the Pašman channel.
According to the Marine Fisheries Act, the Minister of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development is authorised to decide on most of the hot fishing issues; the number of concessions and allocations, allowed fishing tools, allowed periods and fishing areas, fishing closures, defining special habitats, the cost of permits and penalties etc. The Minister does take advice from specialists, but makes the final decision on his own. Can one man have enough expertise and work capacity to promptly make well balanced decisions in all important and controversial questions of agriculture and fisheries - no matter how correct, dedicated and able he is?
