Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• M.F. Leopold

Titel

Spisula’s, zeeëenden en kokkelvissers: een nieuw milieuprobleem op de Noordzee

Ist Teil von

• Sula, 1993-01

Ort / Verlag

Nederlandse Zeevogelgroep

Erscheinungsjahr

1993

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In the past 3 years, In the past 3 years, stocks of shellfish were severely depleted in the Dutch Wadden Sea, forcing tens of thousands of Eiders Somateria mollissima out of this area. Beached bird surveys showed that many thousands starved to death, and tens of thousands moved into the inshore zone of the adjacent North Sea, where they found banks of the bivalve mollusc Spisula subtruncata to feed on. The Eiders share the coastal North Sea with Common Scoters Melanitta nigra. Over 100,000 of these seaduck have wintered in our waters in the past three years (accompanied by some Velvet Scoters M. fusca). With the cockle fisheries severely restricted, the fishermen turned to another resource: Spisula! Both ornithologists and fishermen found an exceptionally large group of 125,000 Common Scoters, 12,000 Velvet Scoters and 60,000 Eiders north of the Wadden Isle of Terschelling, above a rich bank of Spisula. The cockle fleet started to fish for Spisula early February 1993. After complaints by green organisations, the operation was stopped temporarily for technical legal reasons. The fishermen should have asked for a licence first. Getting this piece of paper was a matter of days only, since the Dutch Fisheries Law does not include a paragraph on Spisula. This forced the government to legalise this fishing, and it seems only logical, knowing the efficiency of the Dutch fleet, that the seaduck are in dire straits in The Netherlands.