‘No hamsi today’: Sustainability of Black Sea fishing sector under threat
TRABZON – On a very warm day in January, Erkan Acuner sat at a tea house in the Faroz port of Trabzon. He went out fishing that morning, looking for kefal (grey mullet) and tirsi (twaite shad). After some three hours on the water he returned to shore.
The next day, a school of hamsi (anchovies) was expected to reach Turkish waters, he heard from his colleagues in Georgia.
“Where we sit right now, at this exact spot, fifteen years ago we were fishing for istavrit and mezgit,” Acuner told Turkey recap, using the Turkish terms for horse mackerel and whiting.
A new coastal road has since been completed, extending the shoreline a few dozen meters into the sea. Fishers like Acuner still feel the effects of the project: “The roads have been very good for us, but the ecological balance has been greatly disturbed.”
He then recalled the abundance of Horse mackerel in the past. “We would go in the evening, we would cast the nets and in the morning we would easily catch 50 to 100 kilograms. Now we are casting nets three times the size and getting the same weight,” Acuner said.
Fish populations in the Black Sea have been increasingly impacted by ecological interference, often in the form of construction or regional development, and also climate change, which is changing water temperatures, currents and marine habitats.
At the same time, the uncontrolled practice of overfishing is putting further pressure on Black Sea marine life. The combined effects of all three trends are threatening the sustainability of the regional fishing industry, which is central to the economies and identities of coastal towns like Trabzon.
Developmental gains and losses
In a report about the state of Mediterranean and Black Sea Fisheries in 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) noted that while improvements have been made, current fishing practices still operate at twice the sustainable level.
“Overexploitation of stocks has decreased over the past decade. However, most commercial species are still fished at unsustainable levels,” the report states.
Specifically for Turkey, FAO writes: “Threats to the sector are over-fishing, fleet overcapacity, poor environmental planning, and unregulated fishing.”
The report’s conclusions are familiar to Ahmet Mutlu, president of the Eastern Black Sea Fishermen's Cooperatives Union, which represents 38 cooperatives between Samsun and Rize. Mutlu comes from a family of fishermen.
“When I was a child, there were about thirty different species,” he remembered. Now he estimates there are only a few left. Why was there such a decline?
“Because of bad policies,” Mutlu told Turkey recap. He said there are laws, but they are not enforced.
“You know Barış Manço?” Mutlu asked, referring to the Turkish rock singer. “He had long brown hair.”
He went on to describe how in the 70s, he would dive into the sea with friends and they would collect brown seaweed that looked like Manço’s hair. Then they would put the seaweed on their heads pretending to be the rock legend.
Looking at the water today, Mutlu said that the same brown seaweed is nowhere to be found, suggesting recent development projects that were built into the sea, like the coastal road and new airports, were to blame.
Climate and industry impacts
Apart from environmental damage, fish stocks are also affected by climate change. When Turkey recap interviewed Mutlu at the end of January this year, it was unusually warm in Trabzon.
“The sea water temperature is currently 13 degrees, but it should have gone down to 9 degrees this season. This affects the migration direction of the fish,” he said, adding fish were moving east in search of colder waters in Georgia or Russia.
Turkey has the largest fishing fleet in the Black Sea, with almost 9,000 fishing vessels. Bulgaria comes second with 1,200 vessels, while Georgia operates 68 fishing boats. Russia has not provided recent data to the FAO.
Looking at the Mediterranean and Black Sea together, Turkey produces the largest amounts of wild-caught fish and farmed fish. For the Black Sea (and also Turkey, in general), the most caught fish is the European anchovy.
In recent years, most fishing in the Black Sea focuses on small fish, like anchovies. As a result, smaller fish (forage fish) stocks have declined and this impacted the food chain, causing declines for larger fish stocks, according to İlhan Yandı, associate professor at the Maritime Faculty of the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University in Rize.
“These [anchovy] stocks began to be overexploited and overfished. All fish species in the Black Sea except anchovy feed on anchovy. When anchovy decreases, there is a serious problem in other species as well,” Yandı told Turkey recap. “If I were to name the problem in the Black Sea, I could call it excessive anchovy fishing rather than overfishing,” he added.
There are a few possible solutions, Yandı said. Fishing could be banned for certain species, certain areas or completely for certain time periods. For turbot, a fish variety whose numbers are rapidly declining in the Black Sea, a five year ban could ensure the next generation of fish will survive, he estimated.
“Let's say hunting can be stopped until the stocks recover, until they reach the desired level,” Yandı said. “Of course, the problem here is this: It is necessary to take precautions considering the people who earn their entire living from fishing. Of course, it is not right to leave them unemployed.”
Yandı said most Black Sea fishers are seasonal workers and have other jobs outside of the fishing season, so unemployment compensation could come in various forms, but he insisted a fishing ban was absolutely necessary.
“Fishermen can't get enough of fishing. So they try to hunt until the fish is exploited. They don't think about the limits. They think that if I don’t catch this fish, others will,” Yandı said.
View from Trabzon
At the fish market in the city center of Trabzon, only a few shops sold anchovies the day Turkey recap visited. Most vendors expected more anchovies to come the following day.
“The fish business is getting worse every year,” said Emin Avcı, who has been selling fish for twenty years at this market. “Why? Because of unconscious hunting. The fish that are being hunted are very small. Fish are slowly becoming extinct.”
The products on display in Avcı’s small market were mackerel, pollock and garfish. He also sold salmon and sea bass, which are farmed fish.
“Let's say we used to have fifteen types of fish in the past, but now there are five or six types of fish left,” Avcı said.
He said the current conditions make him worry about future generations. His father was active in the fishing business for 50 years, so for him, it is not only about losing work, but a tradition.
“If it continues like this, Turks will not be able to see fish here,” Avcı told Turkey recap.
A lot of people in the industry recognize the problems, but nobody is taking responsibility, said Taner Yıldız, associate professor at the department of Fisheries Technology and Management at İstanbul University.
“We need a holistic approach to protect species, to protect fisheries. We need to educate [fishers] on their effect on the ecosystem. In this ecosystem, if you break one chain, this is going to lead to a collapse of the whole ecosystem,” he told Turkey recap.
Small-scale fisheries
Of all fishing boats in the Black Sea, 84.7 percent are categorized as small-scale vessels. These boats are 12 meters or less in length and catch fish mostly for the local or domestic market.
Then, 8.6 percent of vessels are trawlers or beam trawlers, bigger vessels that drag larger nets behind them. Finally, just under 5 percent of vessels are much larger ships, known as purse seiners or pelagic trawlers, which can stay at sea for weeks.
When looking at the landings – caught fish that are brought ashore – the large purse seiners or pelagic trawlers are responsible for over 80 percent of the fish products. Meanwhile, the small-scale vessels are responsible for 5 percent of the landings.
In a 2022 report for the World Wildlife Fund, researchers Didem Göktürk, Tomris Deniz and Cemil Timuçin Dinçer argued small-scale fishers should be prioritized, better protected and included in decision-making processes to improve the sustainability of the fishing sector.
“The deep knowledge of these stakeholders of the fishing industry about marine ecosystems and the close relationships they establish with these ecosystems also give them the chance to observe important environmental and climatic changes first-hand. Small-scale fishers are not only 'users of resources' but also 'custodians of the sea',” they wrote.
Taner Yıldız added that the large industrial fisheries have the biggest impact on the environment. The practice of traditional small-scale fisheries is much less damaging to natural habitats as they catch less fish.
Fishing subsidies
The Turkish government currently supports the fishing industry through various ways. One method involves discounted loans through Ziraat Bank and Agricultural Credit Cooperatives.
“We have supported our sector with a total of 23.2 billion lira of subsidized loans since 2002,” Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during the opening of the 2023-2024 fishing season.
Additionally, there is a support package where fishermen do not have to pay the Special Consumption Tax on fuel, which Erdoğan said had cost the government a total 15.6 billion lira since 2004.
“We have not forgotten our small-scale coastal fishermen,” the president added, highlighting support for more than 14,000 coastal fishermen with vessels smaller than 12 meters, totaling 313 million lira at that time.
Recently, on Feb. 26, Turkey signed a WTO agreement on fishing subsidies, committing to not grant subsidies to fisheries that fish overfished stock or that contribute to illegal, undeclared and unregulated fishing.
But Taner Yıldız said the current government policies and subsidies mostly benefit industrial fisheries, and there is not enough oversight on vessels that violate the rules that were already in place.
“Yes we have some rules written in the book, but the problem is the control mechanism … We don’t allocate enough money to the control mechanisms,” Yıldız said.
Increased aquaculture production
In the same speech, Erdoğan said the goal is to increase the targets for marine and aquatic products every year, adding it's everyone's duty to protect and ensure sustainability of the seas.
That fishing record was broken in 2023, with 1 million tons of production in both fishing and aquaculture, according to figures announced on Feb. 28 by Mustafa Altuğ Atalay, director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
In recent years, aquaculture in Turkey has expanded rapidly, growing 35 percent between the 2020-2021 and 2018-2019 seasons. As a result, a significant amount of anchovies are used not for human consumption, but as fish food.
In recent years, aquaculture in Turkey has expanded rapidly, growing 35 percent between the 2020-2021 and 2018-2019 seasons. As a result, a significant amount of anchovies are used not for human consumption, but as fish food.
Of all countries surrounding the Black Sea and Mediterranean, Turkey by far is the highest producer of aquaculture products, of which the majority is exported, according to the FAO. The most popular species are sea bass and sea bream.
As for regulations, currently there is a quota on turbot, and only anchovies of more than 9 centimeters are allowed for landings.
Both Yandı, the academic from Rize, and Yıldız from İstanbul University said more quotas and fishing bans are the only solutions.
“In the past we had swordfish, bluefin tuna, but we don't have them anymore. The problem is overfishing and pollution. If we want to protect some species, it is possible,” Yıldız told Turkey recap.
In Yandı’s words: “Endangered species may come back to life.”
Although fisherman Erkan Acuner acknowledged large vessels are harming fish stocks as a whole, he also viewed the issue from a labor market perspective.
“Of course, it is badly affected now, but there are 40 people on that boat. All those 40 people have families. We also need to look at it from that perspective. In other words, that person will earn his money or someone else should take care of [those families]. This happens because everyone works to get by themselves.”
He added, he still has hope for the sector: “When I was 20 years old, our elders would always say that fishing would be over. Look, 20 years have passed. They still say the same, but the fishing still continues.”
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This article is part of a series of environmental reports produced with support from the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Turkey Office, and in no way can be interpreted to reflect the views of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.