The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

TRAWLING, 1950-1995
After the Second World War, the Danish fish-processing industry took
shape. A filleting industry developed in most harbours, serving the new
market for refrigerated food. Until the 1970s, the industry relied upon
home producers, but in the 1980s the fish processing industry has
increasingly relied upon European and even third world suppliers. In the
1990s, most of the small and medium-sized concerns have succumbed to
the competition of large companies, and a growing proportion of the
Danish fish market is served by imports from European plants. The
traditional seiners have fared badly in this process. Since 1970, most of
the wooden seiners have been scrapped and the future for the few
remaining seems bleak. Small trawlers and netters and very large
purse-seine netters dominate the catches of fresh fish today.
In the 1960s catches grew from 0.7 to 1.4 million tons, but in the
1980s and the first half of the 1990s catches have stagnated at around 1.8
million tons of fish. The catches seem to have reached a biological
maximum, and future growth in the sector will be related not to more but
to higher-quality catches.
The expanding element of the Danish fisheries through the last half
century was to be found in the fish-meal and fish-oil industry. Introduced
around 1950 to the harbour of Esbjerg, the industry grew incessantly
until the mid-1970s. While the fishermen at first converted their old
wooden seiners to trawling, the building of steel-trawlers began in 1957
and in the 1960s the import of large German trawlers transformed the
harbours by exerting a demand for deep docks. In the next decade,
fishermen ordered many more new home-built trawlers, only to be struck
by the repercussions of the oil crisis which made the medium-sized
150-250 GRT vessels uneconomical. In addition, catch statistics
revealed signs of over-capacity in the fleet. In the 1980s a few
supertrawlers of 400-700 GRT were built, but under the auspices of the
European Common Fisheries Policy most money directed to the fishing
industry went into scrapping even relatively new trawlers in order to
reduce catching capacity. The fish-meal sector remained confident,
mainly due to the conglomeration of three plants in Esbjerg which now
make up the largest plant of its kind in the world. 361
361 While there is a large body of biological and economic studies of recent fisheries
issues, there are few historical analyses. For an overview of the field, see Poul Holm
(ed.), Fiskere og Farvande.
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