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

By 1995, the fishing industry seems to be at the end of the decline.
The hope is that reduction will slow down, and a new equilibrium will be
established between catch capacity and fish resources. Employment on
board has been drastically reduced. In 1995, it is estimated that there are
fewer than 5,000 professional fishermen, or no more than 1 per thousand
of the total population. They have overcome the acute structural
problems of the 1980s, but while reduced there seems to be no new
formula to carry the industry into the next millennium. The major change
over the past two decades is that the traditionally liberal fisheries have
turned into a highly regulated and politically sensitive industry.
CONCLUSION
In the development of Danish fisheries, we have discerned five main
stages. In the medieval period, the drift net for catching herring was the
main fishing tackle; the Hanseatic organisation of the fish trade meant
that the quality of the fish cure was consistent and secured a high-priced
market throughout Europe for the Sound herring; fishermen in their
thousands from all over Denmark took part in the fishery. By the end of
the Middle Ages, Danish merchants and gentry had taken over parts of
the trade, and the royal policy of confronting Hanseatic interests was
relatively successful; Danish merchants played an important part in the
development of the new fisheries off West Jutland, in the Limfiord and
off Båhuslen.
Secondly, by the 1620s, the Danish fisheries entered a phase of
drastic decline, not to rise again for the next two-and-a-half centuries.
The decline is not fully explained in this paper, but several possible
causes are discussed. An ecological explanation may be relevant, but at
the current state of research cannot be properly assessed. Economic
factors are better known; they include Dutch competition and a shift of
Danish economic interests away from a maritime to a manorial economy
following a relative price decline for fish. The main fishery to survive the
crisis of the seventeenth century was the Limfiord herring fishery.
However, by the middle of the eighteenth century even this fishery was
severely challenged by the herring industry of the by now Swedish
Bohuslän, and protective trade measures were not enough to reinvigorate
the fisheries. By the second half of the eighteenth century, fishermen
were considered mainly as a labour reserve for the shipping industry and
as the merchant marine needed more and more men, the fisheries
declined.
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