Fisherman reports murky water and collapsing catches near Langeland

Fisherman Klaus Nielsen says the sea east of Langeland has turned brown and that black, stringy clumps are sticking to his nets, DR reports. He says the condition is unlike anything he has seen in the area before.

“There are some places where the net is completely black. I do not know what it is, whether it is algae or something else. But something is completely wrong,” says Nielsen, who owns the cutter SG 120 Fru. Nielsen.

When he returned from a day at sea, Nielsen said the knots in the net were covered in what he described as sludge. He added that the nets caught no fish when they were completely black.

Nielsen is one of the few commercial fishermen still working every day in Denmark’s inner waters. Coastal fishing has declined sharply in recent years, both on Langeland and across Denmark.

His family has been involved in fishing for four generations. His 13-year-old grandson, Niclas Nielsen, joins him twice a week to haul in the nets and hopes to become a fisherman himself.

Four generations of the family gathered at Spodsbjerg harbour, where the cutter was moored after the day’s work. Compared with the past, Nielsen’s father, Bent, described the fishing as “terrible”.

Bent Nielsen recalled catches of 2,000 kilograms of cod and a record cod weighing 34 kilograms. Today, a cod caught in Danish waters weighs about five kilograms, he said.

Klaus Nielsen’s catch that day consisted of 50 kilograms of sole and 140 kilograms of very small plaice. He caught no cod.

Oxygen depletion threatens fishing

At the harbour’s only restaurant, Kutterfisk, most of the fish served comes from elsewhere. Owner Kim Nielsen said local fishermen were bringing in little fish, and that what they caught was very small.

Denmark’s first official report on oxygen depletion this year was released by Aarhus University on Friday. It indicated that conditions could resemble the difficult years of the recent past, while warmer weather had caused oxygen depletion to arrive unusually early.

The Danish Fishermen’s Association says oxygen depletion is one of the main reasons fishing has almost disappeared from the inner waters.

Researchers also point to nutrients from agriculture, pollutants from wastewater, overfishing and climate change, as well as widespread and disruptive activity at sea, as pressures on the Danish marine environment.

Nielsen is described at the harbour as southern Funen’s most active fisherman, and perhaps the only one still fishing full-time every day, almost regardless of the weather.

His previous wooden cutter was scrapped three years ago because it was too expensive to operate and there were too few fish. His current vessel is old, he said, but it keeps him afloat.

His sons also fish, although not full-time. Nielsen hopes his grandson will one day be able to work as a fisherman, while Niclas says he will probably have to fish in the North Sea rather than from Spodsbjerg.

“There is nothing left here at home,” Niclas said.

Nielsen said the decline in coastal fishing had continued for many years, but that conditions were especially abnormal this year. He said the fishing grounds had been completely lifeless since 1 March.

The water, which is normally clear, was cloudy and brown, Nielsen said. He had a seabed sample examined, and it contained mostly algae. He said he still did not know whether the cause was climate change, farming or something else.

Mads Christoffersen, chief biologist at the marine think tank Hav, said cloudy, algae-filled water could be a sign of oxygen depletion. However, he said he could not identify the material with certainty and that it did not look healthy.