"The seasons don't happen, so the fish leave"
The following is part of Currents and Tidings, a series that explores the implications of climate change for fishing and fisher livelihoods through the stories and voices of fishers.
The morning fish market in Noli, a small town on the Ligurian Sea in northwest Italy, is not a bustling affair. A few fishers stand around their tables, which are nearly empty by 10 a.m. “There are no fish [in the sea],” fisherman Vittorio told me, sitting in front of the market in his bright yellow waterproof overalls. “We were four or five boats out on the sea this morning, and by 10 or 11 a.m. there is nothing left to sell.”
The small-scale fishers use a variety of fixed nets, usually setting them out in the evening and pulling up their catch the following morning. There has always been year-to-year variability in the catch, but the last few years have seen unprecedentedly low levels of fishing in Noli. “It has changed slowly,” Vittorio said. “Twenty years ago we caught much more.”
Fishing in Noli historically draws on both local stocks of fish that live along the coast, and on pelagic fish that live in the open ocean and seasonally migrate along the shore to feed and reproduce. In recent years, populations of the local species—including sand smelt, whiting, and bogue—have dwindled. These species are eaten by the migratory fish like mackerel, tuna, Atlantic bonito, and garfish. Combined with warming water temperatures and changing seasonal conditions, the loss of their food source means the migratory fish no longer come close to the shore.
All fishing is seasonal, but when the fishers are targeting migratory species, the seasons are particularly important. Marco, who has been fishing in Noli for ten years, explained, “for each month there is a fish, or a series of fish. But this seasonality is not consistent anymore.” 2015 was a particularly extraordinary case as the hottest year on record worldwide. The sea temperature in the summer reached 30°C, the highest the fishers can remember, with little difference in temperature between the land and the sea. “This year, there were very strange climatic conditions,” Vittorio said. “A month ago [in December], we were already wearing t-shirts as if it was April or May. It’s nice for tourists, it is even nice for us out on the water, but the seasons are completely out of whack.”
Fishers in the gulf of Noli also rely on seasonal storm surges to refresh the water in the gulf, cleaning the sea floor of old sediments and dead algae. Strong winds stir up the water in the gulf and refresh its supply of dissolved oxygen, which is an essential element for all marine life. Normally, the storm surges arrive between October and December and bring the pelagic fish closer to shore. “Because of the extreme climatic conditions this year, there were no storm surges,” Vittorio said. “So we did not see the fish.”
After visiting the market, I wanted to know more about what fishing was like in Noli before the fish populations started to dwindle. I spoke with Franco, a 75-year-old retired fisherman, about what has changed in the last fifty years since starting his career.
Emily: Can you tell me a bit about how the fish catch has changed since you started fishing?
Franco: That is the million-dollar question! What has changed? Everything has changed! Before, there was everything.
Emily: What kinds of fish did you used to catch?
A day's catch of bianchetti (juvenile sardines). Photo by Emily Farr
Franco: There used to be huge masses of fish that were born and lived here along the coast—species like Mediterranean sand eel, curled picarel, and sand smelt. The Atlantic saury, a fish about as long as your finger with a short beak, used to make waterfalls in the sea swimming one on top of the other. You could see the water sparkling. Ehhh—I have seen some things… Those fish, not the ones that entered our sea from the Atlantic but the local species, are extinct. Even when the big trawlers go out, they don’t catch any.
There also used to be storm surges, and some fish entered the gulf. It was always a surprise what would come tomorrow. The seasons would run their course, but there was a continuous supply of fish.
Emily: When did the fish populations start to fall?
Franco: Let’s see… until about 1970 we still fished bianchetti, the juvenile sardines, from February until April. Now fishing for bianchetti is prohibited. In the summer, the season for anchovies arrived, and with the anchovies came mackerel and sardines. Now, there is nothing. Three Atlantic bonito follow the three tiny anchovies that come to find refuge near the shore. When I was a boy, the old fishermen told me that the true anchovy lives in the Atlantic up north. When the season comes, the anchovy migrates south like a bird. That is, he used to migrate. Behind the anchovies there were tuna, Atlantic bonito, little tunny—a whole food chain. Where the small fish goes, the large fish follows because he needs to eat. This lasted until 1970 or 1975, no later.
1947 was the best year for anchovies. The huge school passed along the shore and deposited its eggs, and by September we had the juvenile anchovies. In the morning when you went to the shore, you saw the water jumping with fish—blum, blum, blum. Then, year by year, the catch fell. And now the true anchovies have vanished, and the huge schools of fish that followed behind them do not enter into the gulf.
The continually low catch, combined with the added unpredictability of climate change, means that the fishermen have to work much harder only to get fewer and fewer fish. All of Noli used to make its living on fishing with a large fleet of small boats lining the shores, which are now nearly empty. A young fisherman, also named Marco, told me, “In the 1950s, the entire beach here in Noli was covered with fishing boats. They all fished at night with lamps out on the sea… it was spectacular.” Now there are only ten active fishermen in the local cooperative.
These interviews have been translated from Italian, condensed and edited.
Emily graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in geology. Don't ask her about rocks though, she is interested in the intersection of fisheries, fisherfolk, and climate change.