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Imprint
Structural Change in Coastal Fisheries
Project
Project code: TI-SF-08-PID2371
Contract period: 01.01.2021
- 31.12.2027
Purpose of research: Applied research
Coastal fisheries change. Reduced catch opportunities put enormous economic pressure on the fishers. Thereby, fisheries are not exclusively a business. Fisheries is a centuries old cultural practice, which characterises coastal communities until now.
For various reasons the number of fisheries enterprises have declined since a couple of years. Baltic Sea fisheries face the greatest challenge since the German reunion: The quotas for the most important target species, western herring, western and eastern cod, have been reduced dramatically. Further and in regard of climate change, it is uncertain, if those stocks will ever recover. Currently it seems more likely, that the available catches will be permanently lower than in recent times. At the North Sea, international competitiveness, which have been intensified since the Brexit, and the trend to rationalise, have led to a concentration along the supply chain. Producers power have become weaker. Conflicts between offshore energy, nature protection, shipping, ocean dumping and other users of the marine waters tighten up the situation. The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) of the European Union attributes coastal fisheries a central role for the sustainable use of the marine resources fish. Coastal fisheries provide healthy, protein rich food, which is extracted with comparable low-impact and regionally. Fisheries is not only a business. Fishers characterise the culture of coastal communities with their lifestyle since centuries. A further decline of small scale fisheries endangers a sustainable use of fish resources and their cultural heritage. This trend have consequences, which goes far behind the sector itself. Jobs along the seafood supply chain and infrastructure at local ports would disappear. The regional support of fresh fish would be in danger of extinction. The loss of identity as a fisheries’ place would hit the coastal communities in addition. At least, a disappearance of fisheries, would vanish local fishing, cultural, historical and environmental knowledge, which is mainly pass on oral tradition from generation to generation. Objective of our research is to identify, how coastal fisheries and fisheries communities can adjust to the problematic challenges nowadays. To answer the question of future structures is preconditional to maintain the local and sustainable exploitation of seafood. It ensures that coastal fisheries will meet its economic, cultural and social functions for the coastal communities further on.
Section overview
Subjects
- Marine fisheries
- Landscape Planning
