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| Fishermen have cast their nets in the Patok lagoon. |
In the Patok valley by the Adriatic Sea, fishermen have found new ways to bring fish to shore.
The axle of an old "Benz" brand vehicle serves to set in motion the ropes, to which the fishing nets are attached. The whole process is controlled from the car's cabin.
Primitive fishing practices are not the only problem facing fishermen in this area. The main concern is the minimization of fish stocks. In the Kune Vain Lagoon, the decline in fish numbers is related to many factors.
One of the most important is the pollution that comes from the city of Lezha or from the chemicals used for agricultural lands, which arrive in the lagoon through hydrovores.
"The problem of pollution is the hydrovor, which makes all the waste of the surrounding areas. All detergents and poisons pass into the lagoon and the fish necessarily do not enter. The lagoon itself is marked by the entrance of the Drin that enters. The entry of fish and the production of fish has dropped a lot," says Çelë Gjetja from the Fisheries Management Organization in Kune-Vain.
The decline of the fish stock is not limited only to the Patok valley but is spread throughout the Albanian coastline. According to researchers in the field, this happened due to indiscriminate and illegal fishing, but also by large companies operating in this business.
"It is widely accepted that in the last three decades, there has been a decline in fish stocks. If we caught 100 fish, 100 eels, today we catch 25," says Spase Shumka, professor of Aquaculture at the Agricultural University of Kamza.
"Recently, there is a concern of all fishermen, which is called small-scale fishing. They encounter the fact that large companies, which have powerful ships, hunt not in the defined area a few miles from the coast, but they also enter the bottom part, hunting in this way even in spaces that do not belong to them. This has very negative effects," he added.
According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Mediterranean Sea has a high degree of overfishing and only 36.6% of species are sustainably exploited.
Based on the recommendations of the FAO, Albania has banned from 2020 the granting of new permits for professional commercial fishing and has equipped large fishing vessels with satellite monitoring systems to stop their activity beyond the distance of 3 nautical miles or 50 meters depth.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, commercial fishing with large vessels is the most formalized sector of the economy, while the monitoring system enables their observation in real time via satellite.
"From the end of January 2022 until today, no fishing vessel has entered the prohibited area and no administrative measures have been taken," Deputy Minister of Agriculture Roland Kristo told BIRN.
Aquaculture experts question the results of the ministry, as in their expeditions they have found damage to the sea habitat, which according to them cannot be caused by small fishermen and their primitive tools.
"We come across less and less specific molluscs for deep areas, which are caught with trawls. Or sea sponges are almost going to minimum levels. Starfish, urchins, sea cucumbers, but also other groups like cnidarians... As a result of the use of fishermen, they are damaged not only in their area, which we call the circular area, an area that goes over 40 meters deep but also in other areas that are shallower", emphasizes Spase Shumka.
Professor Shumka also finds under fishing a concern and calls for more control over fishing operators.