Herring in first place
Fishermen on the high seas and on the coast are catching less – prices have risen
08/21/2023 4:26 p.m
Declining catch quotas are affecting the fishermen in the North and Baltic Seas, but are intended to secure stocks. The German profession took less from the seas last year, but has long been mostly in other waters. Thanks to higher prices, however, the fishermen earned more.
German fishermen caught fewer fish from the seas last year. A total of 1,245 fishing vessels landed 150,249 tons of fish – a year-on-year decline by percent, as reported by the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food. The reasons for the decline are reduced catch quotas, fewer fishing days and “annual fluctuations due to environmental influences”.
At a good 86 percent, German fishermen landed the majority of their catches abroad, especially in the Netherlands. Other important ports are in Denmark and Morocco. A good third of the catches were herring. Blue whiting (14.5 percent) and sprat (11.5 percent) came in second and third place for the most frequently caught fish.
According to the information, 21,487 tons of fish including bycatch, stored goods, fishmeal and feed fish went over the local quays in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Bremen. Of the 20,758 tons of goods sold and stored, the main volumes fell on edible crab (36.9 percent), mackerel (12.1 percent) and sprat (9.3 percent).
However, the fishing authority could compensate for the lower catches with higher prices. Revenue increased from around 162 million to more than 187 million euros over the year. According to the Fish Information Center, private households in Germany bought 434,413 tons of fish and seafood last year and spent 4.9 billion euros on them. The Germans’ favorite fish is Alaska pollock, followed by salmon, tuna, herring and shrimp.
WWF: Living conditions in the North Sea and Baltic Sea are bad
Meanwhile, the nature conservation organization WWF announced that the living conditions of fish in the North and Baltic Seas were poor. “The past five years have been the worst years in history for Baltic herring. Its recovery will take a long time. And the cod stock in the western Baltic Sea has collapsed completely in recent years,” said WWF fisheries expert Karoline Schacht. Reasons for this include overfishing and the increasing effects of the climate crisis. The WWF did not give specific figures on the stocks.
With a view to the poor state of the fish stocks in the local seas, the organization called for the establishment of large-scale and long-term protected areas without economic use and better controls of the catches. Then more fish from the North Sea and Baltic Sea could be on the German menu again in the future. “Fish from domestic production is now a rarity,” continued Schacht.
Around 80 percent of the most popular fish and seafood in Germany, such as Alaska pollock, tuna or shrimp, are imported and end up with consumers primarily as canned or frozen goods. “If we want to continue eating local wild fish, we urgently need to improve its living conditions. Healthy fish stocks only exist in healthy seas, they are inextricably linked.”