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'Where are the mackerel?' Alarm as Bosphorus fish stocks crash
It is high season for the popular variety of tuna, with shoals teeming through the Bosphorus on their way from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.
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A fishing boat lays its nets in the Marmara sea off the cost of Istanbul, on November 6, 2022. It is high season for the popular variety of tuna, with shoals teeming through the Bosphorus on their way from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. But pulled taut across the strait are fishing nets more than a kilometre (3,280 feet) long. Anglers who cram shoulder to shoulder along the banks say the nets leave them with little chance, and the fish with even less.
(AFP/Yasin Angkul )
Despondent Sunday anglers watch crestfallen as a trawler winches an enormous net out of the waters of the Bosphorus.
"Clear off!" they shout from the shore, impatient to get their hooks back into the depths of the strait that runs through Istanbul.
"I have been here since 6 am but a trawler came and dropped its nets. That blocked us completely," grumbled Mehmet Dogan, fed-up at only having caught one fish all day, a 40-centimetre (16-inch) bonito.
It is high season for the popular variety of tuna, with shoals teeming through the Bosphorus on their way from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.
But pulled taut across the strait are fishing nets more than a kilometre (3,280 feet) long.
Anglers like Dogan who cram shoulder to shoulder along the banks say the nets leave them with little chance -- and the fish with even less.
Fish stocks in the Bosphorus have plummeted, according to Saadet Karakulak of Istanbul University. In the space of a few years, hauls have fallen from 500,000 to 600,000 tonnes a year to 328,000 tonnes, she said, saying it is "proof that stocks are diminishing".
