TRABZON – On a very warm day in January, Erkan Acuner sat at a tea house in the Faroz port of Trabzon. He went out fishing that morning, looking for kefal (grey mullet) and tirsi (twaite shad). After some three hours on the water he returned to shore.
The next day, a school of hamsi (anchovies) was expected to reach Turkish waters, he heard from his colleagues in Georgia.
“Where we sit right now, at this exact spot, fifteen years ago we were fishing for istavrit and mezgit,” Acuner told Turkey recap, using the Turkish terms for horse mackerel and whiting.
A new coastal road has since been completed, extending the shoreline a few dozen meters into the sea. Fishers like Acuner still feel the effects of the project: “The roads have been very good for us, but the ecological balance has been greatly disturbed.”
He then recalled the abundance of Horse mackerel in the past. “We would go in the evening, we would cast the nets and in the morning we would easily catch 50 to 100 kilograms. Now we are casting nets three times the size and getting the same weight,” Acuner said.
Fish populations in the Black Sea have been increasingly impacted by ecological interference, often in the form of construction or regional development, and also climate change, which is changing water temperatures, currents and marine habitats.
At the same time, the uncontrolled practice of overfishing is putting further pressure on Black Sea marine life. The combined effects of all three trends are threatening the sustainability of the regional fishing industry, which is central to the economies and identities of coastal towns like Trabzon.
Continue reading on Turkey recap