Countries

The European Maritime and Fisheries Fund supports community-led local development, a concept that takes into account the needs of different sectors within an area. This has contributed to the development of the fisheries and aquaculture sector in rural and other areas.

The capture-based aquaculture (fattening) of bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) is a well-developed activity in the Mediterranean.

Small pelagics are an important component of the Croatian fishery and processing sector. Sardines and anchovies are the main small pelagic species that are caught and processed into a variety of products intended for the domestic market as well as for export.

Mislov, a family-owned pelagic fishery, expanded its operations in 2015 beyond catching fish when it opened a new processing plant in Policnik, Croatia. The company has been in business since it was founded in 2001 in Kali, on Island Ugljan. It is run by the Mislov family, who have extensive experience in fishing tuna and small pelagic species.

Cromaris, the largest Croatian producer of seabass and seabream has completely renovated its hatchery to double the production of fry of these two species.

The fisheries sector in Latvia is multifaceted and is represented by fishing, processing, trading, and fish farming. The fishing segment relies on the Latvian coastline that has a length of 500 km along the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic Sea as well as 2,400 sq. km of inland waters.

A number of fish species are produced by the fish farming sector in Latvia, but of the species where data is publicly available only three or four are produced in significant quantities. These include carp, sturgeon and rainbow trout. The volumes produced of other species, including tench, crucian carp, and pike, are between 10 and 15 tonnes a year. Rainbow trout production jumped in 2014, the last year for which data is available, by a factor of 9 from the year before, from 4 tonnes to 35 tonnes. The huge increase in production is all the more impressive if one considers that average annual production for the 10 years to 2013 was 4.3 tonnes.

The Latvian seafood processing sector produces a wide variety of products based on locally sourced as well as imported raw materials. Although per capita consumption of fish and seafood at 16 kg per capita is below the EU average (23 kg/capita), local supermarkets offer an impressive range of products – canned, smoked, salted, marinated, and fresh using many different species.

Aquaculture in Latvia consists primarily of the production of common carp farmed in earthen ponds. The volume of fish produced has remained broadly stable for the last decade at about 500 tonnes. Although carp production still dominates the total output from the aquaculture sector, its relative importance has gradually decreased over the last decade, from about nine tenths of the total production to about three fourths. The reason is the gradual increase in the production of other species including rainbow trout, sturgeon, crucian carp and pike. Production of these species has led to 26% increase in the total farmed fish production in the decade to 2014 to 680 tonnes.

The Latvian fleet is active in the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Riga, coastal waters, and also in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of western Africa. In the Baltic Sea the main catch in terms of volumes is of sprat followed by herring, cod, and flounder. In the Gulf of Riga on the other hand, Baltic herring is the primary catch followed by European smelt, while the coastal fishery targets mostly herring and flounder.