Countries

Silute, a small town close to the Curonian lagoon, hosts the Fishery Enterprises Association and producer organisation, Lampetra. About 40 companies are members of the association, which was founded in 1993 and led by Siga Jakubauskiene, the chairwoman of the council.

The aquaculture and marine fisheries research laboratory of the Lithuanian Fisheries Service is a brand new experimental facility on the Curonian spit that is intended to serve multiple purposes. The laboratory was built with support from the European Fisheries Fund and will contribute to aquaculture and marine studies, both theoretical and applied, in Lithuania as well as the wider Baltic region.

The Danish Agrifish Agency, part of the Ministry of Environment and Food, is responsible for creating the conditions necessary for the sustainable growth of fisheries, including aquaculture, and agriculture. The agency has three broad areas of operation – legislation, subsidies, and control – which are used to exploit the country’s natural resources balancing the demands of the environment with that of industry. Bjørn Wirlander, Head of the EU and Fisheries Regulation Unit, and Anja Gadgård Boye, a colleague in the unit, speak here about some of the issues facing the Danish fisheries and aquaculture sector.

Falling numbers of coastal fishers and the disappearance of several fishing harbours due to a lack of activity have prompted parties in the Danish parliament to launch a series of initiatives intended to bolster this segment of the fishing sector and secure its long-term future.

While algae production and consumption is well established in Asia, in Europe it is less well known. However, as consumers focus increasingly on health and information about the benefits of algae become more widespread, this may be changing.

Fisheries Local Action Group Djursland

Kattegat Seaweed is part of Davai, a company specialising, among other activities, in the service and maintenance of physical infrastructure such as bridges, wind turbines, and transformer stations. Investing in seaweed stems from a conviction that a local company should be the first to find out whether a resource on its doorstep can be viably exploited.

A company in Denmark, Plastix, has established a way to reuse lost or abandoned fishing gear by converting it into pellets that can be used to produce plastic items. This gives multiple benefits for the environment.

Located on the Mediterranean Sea, the Gaza strip has an area of 360 sq. km and is home to some two million people. The coastline is 40 km long and has supported fishing activities for many years. Today, however, the fishing sector faces a number of environmental challenges including coastal erosion, high salinity of the water, excessive sediment (particularly around the port of Gaza, and human impacts such as the large volumes of wastewater that flow into the sea, and overfishing.

Gadus, a fishing and processing company based in Gdynia, has grown from a small, local company to the the biggest Baltic fish producer in Poland and a leading processor of white fish selling its products on the domestic and export markets.