The yield of white mussel in our country decreased by nearly 60% last year compared to the previous year, 2022. The drop in 2023 compared to 2019-2020 is 70%. This is what the Executive Director of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Executive Agency (IARA) Nikolay Georgiev told BTA.
The catch of white mussel in Bulgaria was allowed in 2013. In 2018, the yield was 818 tons, after which the amount gradually began to decrease, reaching 450 tons in 2022, and 150 tons in 2023. The data is warning of an alarming decline, that something is happening in the sea. It was on the basis of the IARA statistics that the order of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food was issued for a three-month ban on catching white mussels. You know there was a protest last week by clam fishermen who spoke out against this long ban restricting their ability to practice their craft, there was some tension. I have had talks with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and we have decided to get back together and revisit this decision once again to defuse the tension. Today, in the building of the Agency, we are organizing a broad meeting with all interested parties, we will listen to them, we will hear their arguments and arguments, we will discuss them. I hope that some compromise solution will be reached, to a common position, said Georgiev for BTA.
One of the options that we will discuss at the meeting is to slightly reduce the period of the ban or to divide the ban period into two – to have a spring-summer ban on white clam fishing and an autumn-winter one. According to representatives of science, the mussel reproduces between 12-17 degrees of sea water temperature. These are the months of April, May and a bit of June, and then once again in October and November, when the water temperature drops again, commented Georgiev for BTA.
According to experts, one of the reasons for the reduced yield of white clams is its intensive catch, another is the increased population of rapans that eat the clams.
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