Fishing, it's a black crisis for clams: turnover drops from 120 to 13 million. Here's why

The blue crab certainly did not help but it is accounting for 20% of the problem. Not to mention that the blue crab, already a predator of clams, has now been joined by another alien species hostile to shellfish: the sea nut. Imported species are part of the problem but the real emergency is pollution. Important northern rivers flow into our basin: from the Po to the Tagliamento, from the Adige to the Livenza. Climate change has impacted in different ways.

On the one hand, the amount of mud and debris spilled into the sea has increased disproportionately with the floods. On the other, the temperature of the sea has risen incredibly. Last summer, the temperature of the Adriatic was 30 degrees at the surface and 28 at depth. Something that has never happened before'.

But beyond the weather conditions, what makes life difficult for shellfish fishermen is the sludge. "Mud," adds Stival, "produced by floods but also by what many believe to be industrial spills have now covered the sand of the seabed. And the sand is the natural habitat in which molluscs reproduce. In fact, our cooperative, which used to fish an average of 4 quintals of clams per hour, now has almost zero activity. With the aggravating factor that our licences, which are for hydraulic dredges, cannot be used for other types of fishing. In short, we cannot convert, but we just have to stop our boats'.

A crisis that comes from afar. "Of the now famous disaster that struck the Vaia forest in 2018," Stival added, "many only remember the devastation of the trees. But no one has ever pointed out the effects of that disaster downstream. Not only downstream in the mountains but at sea. Only the fishermen of the Upper Adriatic are aware of the damage that that catastrophic event also produced on the sea'.

The situation was the focus of a meeting today in Veneto between representatives of the cooperative world and officials from the Veneto Region to seek initial countermeasures. Further meetings are scheduled in the coming days with both the national cooperative leadership and the Ministry of Agriculture.

'Masaf,' Stival adds, 'has already earmarked a sum of between three and three and a half million, mainly for monitoring and understanding what happened. But these are insufficient resources. At least 70 to 80 million euro are needed to carry out vessel withdrawals and help the reconversion of about 500 families who have been unable to work for more than 15 months".