N.B. National borders as at 2 October 1990

EUROPE

THE INLAND FISHERIES OF EUROPE

INTRODUCTION

“Interest in freshwater fish and in the biology of fresh waters in Europe extends back for centuries”. (A.V. Holden, Third Chairman of EIFAC, 1981)

This is an attempt to make a total review of the inland fisheries of Europe. In one sense, it is an “encyclopaedia”: it strives to cover most branches of knowledge on the subject, is written with a broad brush, and is not completely plagued with every citation, equivocation, and reference used in some scientific papers. Being an encyclopaedia, it cannot be completely up-to-date, and in its original version was intended to be dependent upon secondary rather than primary sources - in short, a compilation of compilations.

“That would be very simple if these blessed geographies, encyclopaedias and atlases were ever able to agree upon any given fact. But apparently they are not”. (Henrik Willem Van Loon, 1940)

I have, therefore, had to alter the original plan, refer back to original sources, and cite them where it appears useful. (As Karl Lagler was wont to say: “In the event of doubt, return to the basic source.”) To the extent that this has been done, it has increased accuracy, albeit at the expense of simplicity.

In another sense, this paper is a fishery “geography”, since, with respect to each country of Europe, it treats of its location, physical features, climate, hydrography, and the use that is made of its land and waters as they influence its inland fisheries and aquaculture, both with respect to their early state and the ways in which these resources have been developed. There is precedent here for the use of the term “geography”. Coull (1972) uses this term in his “Fisheries of Europe: an Economic Geography”, although, misleadingly, his book is devoted to marine fisheries with the exception of 14 lines on Europe's inland fishery resources. Furthermore, as Mills (1895) said, in his “Bathymetrical Survey of the English Lakes”: “Geography, rightly considered, is not a mathematical science concerned with the description and delineation of an unchanging arrangement… It has to take into account of processes of change, to concern itself with a certain range of time past and time to come, in order to comprehend the present position of affairs”. This review has, therefore, attempted to trace some of the beginnings of inland fisheries in Europe and the trend of their development as a key to their future.

“I shall have to go back…and trace my story from its small beginnings up to these recent times…” (Livy, ca 26 B.C.)

Having raised the question of historical background, let us consider the immediate forerunners of the present review.

Individual descriptions of the inland fisheries of a number of European countries have been prepared over a long period. But regardless of their quality or degree of completeness, many have had limited distribution or have been written in languages unfamiliar to many readers, and have thus lacked general accessibility. Some, when written by nationals or members of State fishery administrations, have, very naturally, tended to minimize the shortcomings of the national fisheries or to overpraise them. (How often have we not heard the phrases: “Teeming with fish”, or “An angler's paradise”, or “Managed in accordance with the most advanced scientific techniques”?) Furthermore, some of these descriptions are out of date or so vague that the reader cannot tell whether they refer to the present or to a state of the fishery ten or fifteen years ago.

Of even more importance, is the fact that when the material on each country is prepared by a different author and not published under a common and critical editorship, the different accounts are not readily comparable. It is difficult to determine: the relative type, size, or importance of their inland fisheries; the extent or manner in which they are changing; the state of their environment; extent of their exploitation; or methods of management. Without such facts, one cannot prognosticate their future.

In addition to such diversity in coverage, hence lack of ready comparability, the accounts or statistics of many inland fishery “catches” fail to distinguish between the harvest through capture from fisheries of open waters or those of large artificial reservoirs (whether stocked or unstocked), and the production derived from true aquaculture confined to units such as drainable ponds or tanks, or other enclosures where the fish are often fed (artificially or through augmented fertilization) and can be totally or almost totally harvested. Other difficulties with regard to statistics will be enumerated later in this chapter; they need not be considered here.

The conclusion, however, is that these and other problems have troubled the individual expository papers on European inland fisheries for many years. I have, therefore, accepted the principle of W.M. Chapman, perhaps the most knowledgeable fishery scientist of this century. As Chapman once told me, it is far better to have most of the information on one subject pass through the mind of one man and emerge as a synthesis rather than depend upon a collection of individual reports.

“Look into your affairs often, and cause them to be reviewed…” (Sir Walter of Henley, 13th Century)

One of the first attempts to review the status of European inland fisheries in a comparable way was made by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in a paper prepared for the first International Inland Fisheries Meeting, held in Helsinki, 24–26 July 1956. Questionnaires on a given array of topics were sent to the then 20 FAO Member Governments of Europe. It was hoped that their response would inform these and other governments of what was being done in the field of European inland fisheries, and assist them to formulate policies for the development of this sector of their economy. The items covered for each country were: population, area, number and extent of water areas, number of fishermen, total annual catch, number of fish culturists, number and extent of fish farms, production through pond culture, and public stocking. Inquiries were also made as to: methods of management, protection of fish stocks, research programmes, and the extent of international cooperation. The document was presented only in tabular form as illustrative of what FAO hoped to present later in more comprehensive form (see FAO, Biology Branch, Fisheries Division, 1956). Following the Helsinki meeting, with information received from other European countries, the paper was revised for the inaugural session of the European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission (EIFAC) held in Dublin, 25–30 April 1960 (see FAO, Biology Branch, Fisheries Division, 1960). Four years later, with the addition of new material and now representing 13 countries but with almost unchanged format, the tables were revised as EIFAC (1964).

Meanwhile, independently of the action taken above, the General Fisheries Council for the Mediterranean (GFCM) circulated a questionnaire to its Member Governments in 1958 to provide information on their inland fisheries. The data collected from six European countries, similar to that procured by FAO and EIFAC, were published as GFCM Secretariat (1959).

Despite these attempts by FAO, EIFAC and GFCM to provide an overall picture of the inland fisheries of Europe, and the subsequent issue by these agencies of a long series of papers on various phases of these fisheries, it was found that there were still great lacks in the information available. excessive detail or ambiguities in some responses, and obvious errors or inconsistencies in others.¹ Furthermore, reliance on tabular presentation alone did not really meet the ends of such a review: provision of a clear “picture” of a fishery, its geographical and hydrographical basis, and the keys to its future.

¹ The subjects treated, together with bibliographical references, are listed in Dill (1976), Holden (1981), and subsequent publications by FAO, EIFAC and GFCM

Accordingly, the FAO Fisheries Department, in cooperation with the Secretariat of EIFAC, embarked upon a different approach to the matter. Under the direction of a single author, it produced a group of “country” reports for 25 European countries using easily available material supplemented by a few statistics derived from the EIFAC Member Governments through a questionnaire (EIFAC/74/Circ.10) issued November 1974². This review, “The Inland Fisheries of Europe” was presented by the author as a meeting paper at the Ninth Session of EIFAC at Helsinki, 7–15 June 1976 (Dill, 1976). The Commission asked that it be expanded, and all of the EIFAC countries were requested through their official Correspondents to correct the paper so that it could be revised.

² Response to this questionnaire and subsequent answers from the countries used in revisions are cited in the specific references as “(name of country)/EIFAC/(date)”

The author then worked intermittently on revision of the original paper, and completed the manuscript in 1985. Unfortunately, there were some financial difficulties in publishing it at that time, necessitating another revision based on the author's compilations during the next five years, as well as another series of reviews by individual EIFAC countries.

Most, although not all, of the countries have supplemented the Helsinki draft, but no additional questionnaires have been sent to them, and greater reliance has been placed on using the literature emanating from or descriptive of the countries. Furthermore, an attempt has been made to correct past mistakes in reporting, or - lacking the information to correct them - at least document their origin. As already stated, this has made the revision a bit more intricate, but has also made it more accurate. The components of the present review and some of the reasoning behind their selection are described below.

“Ordinarily treated, the river is like the veins of a leaf; broadly viewed, it is like the entire leaf” (William Morris Davis, 1899)

“…the river cannot be understood without some knowledge of what happens on the land around it” (E.D. Le Cren, 1972)

In short, we cannot consider the fisheries unless we have some knowledge of the waters which hold these resources, and neither rivers, lakes, or other watercourses can be understood unless we have some knowledge of the land or the geography of the considered country.

An outline of the material intended as coverage for each country in this new review is given in Table 1. (The same general form has been adopted for use in resource surveys for the countries of other continents by FAO's Fishery Resources and Environment Division, and was used by Dill and Ben-Tuvia (1988) in describing the inland fisheries of Israel, an EIFAC country although not on the continent of Europe.) Although information on each subject within the outline has not always been available for each of the countries, its components represent an ultimate checklist of the material considered desirable to present. An explanation of terms used in this review, and the derivation and use of information is given in the chapter entitled “Definitions, Sources and Treatment”.

With respect to each country in the review, the sections of Table 1 numbered 1 to 5 describe its location and its physical and biological features. Why are all of the components included? A few examples should suffice. For example, area and population not only present an immediate impression of the size and importance of a country, but are among its determiners of fishing pressure and the necessity or ability to manage a fishery. Latitude affects the rhythm of daylight and dark, which in turn may influence both productivity and reproduction, and coupled with altitude is a determiner of lake circulation. The basic rocks, soil, vegetational cover, and man's cultural elements determine water chemistry, and this in turn aquatic productivity. Climate affects water temperatures. Most freshwater biologists consider the thermal regime of a river as the primary physical factor influencing its aquatic life, and river water temperatures follow the mean air temperature. Climate determines the growing season, fishing seasons, and the transport of fishery products. Obviously, the number and size of the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, their physical attributes, and their hydrological regimes, are all among the determiners of their faunal assemblages and their types of fisheries.

“We may conclude then that in every respect the valley rules the stream…It is also clear that changes in the valley wrought by man may have large effects” (H.B.N. Hynes, 1975)

Furthermore, the fisheries cannot be understood without knowledge of man's use of land and water. Some of the changes engendered by this use are very old, for example, the early destruction of forests in Cyprus, or the drainage of lakes to create agricultural land as practised by the ancient Romans. Some of the changes are very new, for example, the disposal into streams of oxygenconsuming effluents from concentrated feeding lots for domestic animals, or entrance of warm water from nuclear plants.

Some effects on fisheries of man's land and water use are immediately apparent, e.g., the erection of a dam which creates a new lenitic entity but bars ascent of migratory fishes, the abstraction of water from a river for hydroelectric or irrigation use, or construction of a canal that enables mixing of fish stocks from formerly discrete drainages. Other changes are more subtle, e.g., the replacement of a mixed woodland with one species (today, usually a conifer) with a subsequent change in the supply of ions in the river system which may lead to changes in the composition of its fish population. Pollution, population pressures, increased ability to exploit fisheries through road construction or vehicle ownership; all of man's uses of his lands and waters are vital in determining the type of fishery, its size, quality, use, and duration.

Fundamental to maintenance of a fishery is a supply of water adequate in quantity and quality. Fish must share this water with other users, but their mutual supply is finite, and in most countries there is an intense competition for its use. The actual amount of water used (for agriculture, industry and domestic supply) depends upon many factors such as rainfall, soil, prevalent crops, and degree of industrialization. Thus, in Hungary, for example, agriculture uses about 30 percent of the water and industry uses about 25 percent. At the other end of the European scale, the United Kingdom uses only about 1 percent of its water for agriculture and about 75 percent for industry. It requires about 12 000 litres of water to produce 1 ton of sugar beets, or 500 000 litres of water to produce 1 ton of wheat. Thirty-five thousand litres of water are required to make a ton of woodpulp in Finland. It requires 295 000 litres of water to make a ton of steel, or 2 000 000 litres of water to produce a ton of rayon in Belgium. It takes 30 000 litres of water to do a ton of washing in Sweden, 90 litres of water to produce a litre of beer, and in the UK, about 20 percent of the water is used just to flush toilets.¹ Fisheries must compete for water for all such uses. As G.F. White (1977) said: “There is a continuing strain between power development and fisheries, between irrigation and fisheries, and between different territories within a river basin…These conflicts cannot be fully eliminated but in many instances can be softened”². Section 6 in each country review treats of some of these problems.

¹ Sources for these or similar statements are found in: Smith (1972), Van der Leeden (1975), Hardy (1977), ECE (1978), and USSR (1978)

² Surprisingly enough, many geographers of Europe spend for more time on a discussion of the geological events that shaped a country than the present hydrography or land and water use. An exception is Hoffman's 1977 “Geography of Europe” which stresses both the effects on the continent caused by man's activities, as well as those engendered by the physical bases. With respect to the influence of man's land and water use on inland fisheries and what can be done about it, simplified outlines are found in Le Cren (1972), and Dill, Kelley and Fraser (1975)

Table 1

Country outline - Inland Fisheries of Europe

“Fish that are generally thought to be the same are given different Latin names when they cross political borders.” (Lindsey, 1988)

With sections 1 to 6 as background, we finally come to fish and fisheries themselves (section 7 in each review). The inland fish fauna of each country can be determined in many scientific and popular publications; some of the principal references are listed in this paper. It is been thought useful, however, to use one standard reference and a standard order as far as possible (see Names of Fishes in the next chapter). Furthermore, little attempt has been made to discriminate closely between species or sub-species. For example, most of the white fishes or coregonids (Corigonidae) are simply listed as Coregonus spp.¹.

1 “The systematics of whitefish has long been a field of intense research, and taxonomy one of fervent dispute” (Heinonen, 1988). Many lakes contain more than one (sometimes as many as five) fully sympatric native stocks. Introduction of coregonids by man has created new problems, and factors such as transplantation, pollution, or over-fishing often lead to hybridization or introgression

“It is an interesting aside that unreliable statistics plague fishery evaluations. The lack of reliability seems to stem from the desire of the data gatherers to please ‘rather than be honest’.” (SCOPE, 1972)

The term “fisheries” itself concerns catch or capture or sometimes “production” through aquaculture. Here one requires - or at least desires - accurate statistics. Unfortunately, at least the first sentence of the quotation given above appears to hold for many of the European fishery statistics.

There are many reasons for unreliability in inland fishery statistics. First of all, the nature of the fishery (often small, widely dispersed, or infrequent) makes it impossible to have frequent checks by competent authorities. Often the catches are reported voluntarily. Many of these are reported inaccurately, sometimes by design in order to avoid taxes. Other reports of capture which are dependent upon questionnaires lack accuracy either because of design, inertia, or perhaps faulty memory. Sometimes, even when a governmental office collects rather accurate statistics they are altered by another (governmental) office either through lack of knowledge of the subject, to fit in with an established pattern, or perhaps to pad the results in order to appear more important. Some statistics are simply carried over from one year to another without change. Some are simply sloppy.

But even if the original statistics are reported reasonably accurately in a governmental publication, their subsequent appearance in secondary or tertiary sources is often incorrect. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been a decided offender in this regard with respect to some of its figures on aquacultural production. For example, OECD (1986) has used the term “sea trout”, which should be applied only to the species Salmo trutta, to mean any trout raised in sea water. Thus it may actually be speaking of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). OECD has also often used the term “aquaculture” as synonymous with “inland fisheries”. A third fault of some OECD statistics has been their failure to distinguish between round or live weight and gutted weight, even though the original statistics have been perfectly clear (e.g., Norwegian statistics which say, in two languages: “Tonn rund vekt” and “Tons live weight”).

The FAO Yearbook of Fishery Statistics (and some other FAO publications) all secondary sources-have also made mistakes in their interpretation of governmental statistics. (It must be emphasized here that the Organization relies upon the receipt of accurate information from its Member Governments; it does not create the statistics.) Nevertheless, it too has confused species (listing the Swiss “Weissfische” as coregonids rather than as cyprinids as intended (see the chapter on Switzerland). It has been - at the least - confusing through its original policy of combining the actual “catch” from commercial capture fisheries with “production” from commercial aquaculture, and in some cases by confusing the catch of recreational fishermen with that of commercial fishermen. It has also been guilty of not always distinguishing between the production used for stocking (e.g., fry or yearlings) from the marketable or consumable product.

One fault with some of the earlier statistics in the FAO Yearbooks was that originally the inland catches were presumed to be inconsequential in comparison with the gigantic catches made by some of the sea-fishing countries, and were therefore rounded off or placed in mediocre categories such as “not available”, “none”, “nil” or “zero” or given a symbol denoting a very small quantity. Another fault lay in the fact that even in cases where FAO had misinterpreted the original data (for which it could often be excused), the country contributing the data seems rarely to have informed FAO of the mistake.¹

¹ It seems probable to me that errors in the citation of marine catches were caught at an earlier stage

Various examples of errors and misinterpretations, especially in the FAO Yearbooks of Fishery Statistics are given in the text for individual countries. The reader may think that I have over-elaborated some of the weaknesses of these Yearbooks. One should note, however, that I have drawn freely from them and included one or more tables of “nominal catches” for most countries which are based upon their information. Despite any present faults, the FAO Yearbooks of Fishery Statistics provide the finest secondary “catch” statistics in the world, are the easiest to obtain, and are the recognized sources for many other publications. They indicate the trends in fishery development, and the author's “criticism” stems only from a strong desire to improve them.

Furthermore, steps have already been taken to correct some of the deficiencies. Some of the considerations with respect to these were outlined by the FAO Inland Water Resources and Aquaculture Service (1984), and at the request of EIFAC, FAO has begun a special inland water “catch” enquiry (personal communication from M.A. Robinson, 20 March 1990). Noteworthy among the advances made has been the issuance of “Aquaculture Production 1984–87” by the FAO Fishery Information, Data and Statistical Service (FAO Fisheries Circular No. 815) in January 1989 and its subsequent Revision 1 in November 1989. Eventually, a system may be erected which will provide far greater accuracy.

It is also apparent that many of the recent non-FAO statistics on inland fishery catch and aquacultural production are misleading. As with the FAO figures, I have attempted to interpret them whenever possible. Meanwhile, note that any statistics reproduced here - whether derived from FAO, other intergovernmental agencies, individual governments, or other sources - lack complete reliability. They are often based on what is most readily available to the interested public, and are often copied from secondary sources without being checked for accuracy. They are often estimates, in most cases these are probably too low, and some of them will have changed by the time this review has been published. As the Goncourt Journals of 1861 said: “La statistique est la première des sciences inexactes”.

“… in considering the management of a fishery for any specific purpose, it is sobering to know that the majority of constraints arise externally to the fishery” (R.L. Welcomme, 1978)

Section 8 of the outline, which treats of the ownership of waters, the administration, management and investigation of inland fisheries, and international agreements concerning fishing waters, may be balanced by the quotation above. I have emphasized this conclusion in another paper, pointing out that the patterns of change in fisheries and their consequent changes in administration and management are due to a multiplicity of factors in which, for example, fishing itself is only one element (Dill, 1978).

One should also note that section 8 is probably obsolete already. Sometimes the changes in administration and management are only cosmetic, i.e., the same people or groups continue to do much the same work only under different titles. On the other hand, sometimes the changes are of a more fundamental nature, e.g., a country that has had a strong central system of research or management may shift to one where greater reliance is placed upon regional offices. In passing, one might note that one European country changed the Ministry in charge of inland fisheries four times in as many years!

Finally, section 9 attempts to describe the yield from Europe's inland fisheries, bring together the factors affecting both capture fisheries and aquaculture, and indicate their prospect. Again, one must conclude that the land, valley, and their use by man rule the fisheries, and to quote Welcomme (1978) again it is now apparent that:

“It seems to be a general rule in industrialized countries where food is readily available, that there is a succession in fisheries use from subsistence to commercial to recreational use”.

In Summing it up

Although now small economically from a commercial standpoint, the inland fisheries of Europe are an important part of our culture and they and their waters deserve recognition. Most encyclopaedists, geographers and compilers of national yearbooks seem not to have recognized this point. Thus, the land and water use table of the Swiss Yearbook of Statistics classes its lakes and rivers as “unproductive” areas. (They furnish at least 15 percent of the country's consumable fish supply and are certainly “productive” of recreation and tourism.) Aside from such derogation of the hydrological resource, and despite the absorbing European interest in fish and fishing, most of these books provide a minimum of information on the subject. For example, in all of its 490 pages, the official handbook “Britain 1979” in its section on “fauna”, devotes 22 lines to birds, 13 to mammals (including those extinct), 10 to insects, 6 to its 14 species of reptiles and amphibians, and only 8 lines (of which 4 are on water pollution) to its 30 or more species of freshwater fishes. This minimal treatment of fish is in a country where angling is the second most popular sport for males. “Modern Switzerland” (1978), a book of 515 pages, which has chapters on food production, tourism, and leisure activities, mentions such uses of water as: swimming, canoeing, sailing, and (when congealed) curling, but has not one word on the fishes or fishing in Switzerland. To mention one more official yearbook, the Annuaire Statistique de la France (1986), reporting on a country thronged with fishermen and in the top European bracket of commercial trout production, provides no information on either its catch in the inland capture fishery or its trout culture, although it does provide statistics on the female members of the “Fédération française de twirling batôn”.¹

¹ The number of licenses in 1986 was 16 858

Well, this present review is also deficient in not telling one everything one might like to know about the inland fisheries of Europe. It rarely considers, for example, either the politics or the economic structure of any country. It is fully recognized that the type of fishery development within each country is dictated to a considerable extent by its type of government. However, the type of economy, whether capitalistic, planned, or a mixture of both, of most European countries is well known to most readers. If one wishes to glean figures on GNP, market data, population growth, or economic structure one can turn to many other publications. Moreover, the fact that this review is published under the aegis of an impartial international organization and that many governments (and, therefore, their fishery policies) may change almost overnight - witness the startling recent changes - has determined my reluctance to enlarge upon this issue.

It is also true that this review is not completely up-to-date. However, the statistics of many countries are often not issued until several years after the data are collected, and inquiries made of various countries have sometimes required a year or more for response (same have never responded).

It can also be admitted that the amount of space given to each country or to each segment within a country is unbalanced. To a large extent this is due to the amount of information that has been available to me rather than to the importance of the subject. Better unbalanced, however, than to have no review at all.

I have two last apologies. There are numerous minor discrepancies with respect to statistics on total yield, or catches, or various other data. Such minor differences (often emanating from different sources or published at different times) are obviously of little importance. Had I been unduly concerned with such matters, the space in this review devoted to footnotes might approach that devoted to text. Moreover, actual figures often mean little to the reader; therefore, proportions, ratios or percentages are often substituted. It is the trend which is of most importance.

The last apology is that there is a good deal of repetition. It has been thought best, however, to repeat something (such as the scientific names of fishes) so that the sections on an individual country can be read without reference to another portion of the paper.

I conclude, therefore, with C. Delano Smith (1979):

“…it has to be admitted at the outset, this is a book destined soon to be rewritten. But there comes a time in the history of every subject when a total review is necessary, if only to see the way forward.”

It is believed that the outline is sound, that much of the material will be useful for many years, and that the text can be amended easily. Furthermore, it is hoped that when authentication of more data is really needed, that it will be exact, well referenced, and not glossed over in an attempt to create an aura of contemporaneity.

With a history of over thirty years of working with European fishery scientists, aquaculturists, and administrators, including six years as Secretary of EIFAC, I consider this review to be a labour of love.

William A. Dill