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Dieren en planten

Herring family   Sprat   Cod family   Norway pout   Perciformes   Lesser sandeel   

Water en land

Mens en Milieu

Fishery techniques   Pelagic trawling   Stern trawling   Seining fisheries   Purse seining   Fisheries by sort   Industrial fisheries   
Spawning stock and yield industrial fischery, Ecomare

Industrial fisheries

The industrial fleet in the North Sea catches mostly sprat, Norway pout and lesser sandeel. These are small types of fish with a short life span which swim in large schools in the North Sea. You won't find these fish at the store. They are processed for fish meal and fish oil. Up till 2002, around one million tons of fish were caught yearly for this purpose. That was more than half of all the fish caught in the North Sea. Nowadays, the catches in the North Sea are much less. The fish meal industry switched to the different source, namely blue whiting and horse mackerel. These species are caught mostly in the northeastern part of the Atlantic Ocean.

  • Nylon stockings
    Harbour of Esbjerg, Ecomare

    Since one is fishing large schools of small fish, large yet very finely meshed nets are used. Critics sometimes refer to them as 'nylon stockings'. The industrial fishermen use pelagic trawls or purse seining (nets which can be up to 2 kilometers long and 150 meters deep). The fish are pulverized directly on board to a sort of pulp which can be readily pumped from the ship at the harbor. This pulp is further processed in factories in the harbor into fish meal or fish oil. The fish meal is used as food for pigs, poultry, furred animals and aquaculture. There is a growing demand for fish meal because more and more salmon is being farmed. These salmon live off of pellets made of pressed mini fish. The fish oil is used for various products, such as in the margarine industry.

  • Consequences for marine life

    It has been known for a long time that this form of fishing can be strongly disruptive to marine life. The small fish are the primary food for predatory fish such as cod, seabirds and marine mammals. Around 1985, the standing stock of the lesser sandeel around the Shetland Islands suddenly collapsed, partially due to the tremendous fishery pressure. This led to bad brooding results in the seabird colonies on the islands. In this same period, the Norwegian industrial fleet caught practically all of the capelin in the Barents Sea. Capelin is a small fish species living in Arctic waters. This led directly to massive death among the seabirds there. Just about all harp seals in the region migrated to southern Norwegian coasts, where they drowned in fish nets or were shot for fear of competition with the coastal fisheries.
    Because it concerns short-lived species, the populations of fish can recover relatively quickly. But for the predator animals that are dependent upon it, the effects of such fluctuations are felt for much longer. Many biologists assume that dolphins and porpoises from the northern North Sea migrated massively to the south due to food scarcity in the northern waters.

  • By-catch

    Sometimes, the industrial fishermen catch just as much herring as sprat since they fish with fine-meshed nets. When fishing for Norway pout, the by-catch is mostly young whiting. This causes many political problems, because the catch of adult herring and whiting is bonded to strict regulations. The regulations are undermined when too many young herring and whiting disappear into the pulp from the industrial fishermen.