By now, it's not secret that Turkey -- although blessed with a very long coastline and a cuisine heavy on seafood -- is slowly losing its fish stocks. In fact, as one article pointed out a few years back, the mackerel served in the iconic fish sandwiches along Istanbul's Golden Horn is today most likely hails from Norway, having arrived from there as a frozen filet.
So what's causing the fish in Turkey to disappear? Reuter's takes a look in an article today:
Over fishing, illegal netting and pollution threaten the industry. Anchovy production, which accounts for around two-thirds of the annual catch, fell by 28 percent in 2012, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute.
In a bid to replenish stocks, the government has banned fishing in the summer months when fish reproduce and says it is tightening supervision. But it appears too little, too late.
"Twenty years ago, you put your arm in the water you could pull out fish - there were so many," said Osman Korkmaz, a 53-year-old fisherman who has fished the Bosphorus Strait and Marmara Sea for 40 years.
Aylin Ulman, a researcher with the University of British Columbia's Sea Around Us Project, conducted more than 150 interviews with Turkish fishermen from May through July to determine how Turkey's fisheries have changed.
The number of commercial species in Turkey's fishing areas has fallen to just five or six from more than 30 in the 1960s, she said, based on her survey and catch data Turkey provided to the United Nations from 1967 to 2010.
A combination of more people, too many boats with advanced technology, weak fishing laws with even weaker enforcement and unreliable data on fish stocks - fishermen under-reporting their catch to avoid taxation and fines - were to blame, she said.
All may not be lost for Turkish marine life, though. As Reuters points out, new research is now being funded to help track populations of bonito, a popular type of fish, in an effort to understand what may be impacting the species' decline. Meanwhile, Istanbul's Slow Food chapter has launched a "Slow Fish" effort, urging diners to only frequent restaurants that serve fish that has been sustainably caught. An interview with that project's initiator can be found here.
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