terça-feira, 28 de janeiro de 2025

Spanish fishers in Galicia report ‘catastrophic’ collapse in shellfish stocks

 


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

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/28/spanish-fishers-in-galicia-report-catastrophic-collapse-in-shellfish-stocks

 

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: