Spanish
fishers in Galicia report ‘catastrophic’ collapse in shellfish stocks
Climate
crisis and pollution reported as possible reasons for dramatic fall in numbers
of cockles, clams and mussels
Stephen
Burgen
Tue 28 Jan
2025 06.00 CET
A
“catastrophic” collapse in shellfish numbers is being reported by Spanish
fishers in Galicia, with some stocks falling by as much as 90% in the space of
a few years.
Galicia is
Europe’s principal source of shellfish and, after China, the world’s biggest
producer of mussels, which are farmed in the estuaries.
But figures
published by a fishing website this month reveal an alarming decline in cockles
and clams, which are collected by hand at low tide, as well as mussels, which
are farmed on ropes strung from wooden rafts known as bateas.
In 2023 the
crop of cockles fell by 80% compared with the previous year, while some
varieties of clams fell by 78%.
Mussel
production last year was the lowest in a quarter of a century, falling from
250,000 tonnes in 2021 to 178,000 last year.
María del
Carmen Besada Meis, who heads the San Martiño fishers association in the Ría de
Arousa, one of the principal sources of shellfish in the region, believes that
climate change is the culprit, thanks in part to the recent torrential rains
that have reduced the salinity of the rías. Over the past two years rainfall
has been well above the average.
“But we
don’t have enough concrete evidence and what we’d like is for someone to come
and do some proper research so that we know what’s behind this and what we can
do about it,” she says.
“We’re
marisqueros (shell fishers) and we don’t know what the solution is, which is
why need scientists to help us with this,” says Besada Meis. “The government
needs to put some money on the table for this research.”
But the
other factor behind the collapse in stocks is pollution, according to Marta
Martín-Borregón, responsible for oceans at Greenpeace, Spain, who describes the
latest figures as “catastrophic”.
“The biggest
cause is pollution from waste discharged into the estuary, from agriculture and
from factories, such as the fish canneries,” she says.
There are
also plans to reopen the nearby Touro-Pino copper mine, which will potentially
create more waste, while there is widespread opposition to a proposal to build
a huge cellulose plant in the region which, according to Greenpeace, would
consume 46,000 cubic metres of water a day, the equivalent of the entire
surrounding province of Lugo.
The Galician
water company says that waste is dumped into the sea more than 2,000 times a
year, of which 10% exceeds legal toxicity limits.
While
Martín-Borregón says there is an urgent need to clean up the rías, she agrees
that the key factor is climate change.
“The waters
of the rías are normally cold and the currents bring a lot of nutrients. With
warming seas there are species of shellfish that can’t thrive in warm water,”
she says. “This is especially the case with mussels and as the temperatures
rise the shellfish industry is moving closer towards collapse.”
Another
factor that reduces salinity, in addition to heavy rains, is when the dams are
opened at low tide, flooding the rías with fresh water, causing massive
mortality among bivalves, cockles in particular.
The warmer
waters also attract invasive species, notably the blue crab, native of the
western Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, which is a voracious consumer of local
species such as spider crabs and velvet crabs, both of which have a high market
value.
The only
chink of light is that oyster production has increased slightly, but otherwise
the outlook is grim.
“We can’t
make a living like this,” says Besada Meis. “We carry on working but we’re
living on social security.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário