Shellfish stocks plummet by 90% as locals blame climate and pollution

A dramatic drop in shellfish in Spain's Galicia region has thousands of people who work in the industry fearful for the future.

Galicia is Europe's biggest shellfish provider - and second in the world only to China. But some shellfish stocks have collapsed by more than 90 percent in just a few years - disastrous for the tens of thousands of people employed in the industry.

Cockle numbers have fallen by 93 percent, certain species of clams by 86 percent, and the most recent mussel harvest was the worst in a quarter of a century. 

CGTN got out on a Bateeiro - or mussel fishing boat - with Alfredo Otero to find out why. Alfredo and his employee Joaquin were expecting to haul in around eight tonnes of mussels from the bateas, or platforms made from eucalyptus wood, from which hang ropes where the mussels grow.

They go from tiny seeds the size of a grain of rice to fully grown in two years on ropes hanging from the rigs, but disaster is looming, says Otero, the rig owner.

"We are extremely worried," he says. "The Galician sea as we know it is disappearing. If we keep going like this then in five years this is all gone."

Is climate change to blame?

Galicia can produce this much seafood because of a delicate balance of cold and warm, fresh and salt water, and nutrients carried by currents in estuaries along its northwestern coast.

"Climate change is affecting everything, and even the winds are not the same, the entire dynamic of the river is changing," Otero adds.

"Then there's the pollution: Vineyard run-off, industrial waste from aluminium factories, wood-pulping plants for paper, open air mines, copper, and they just keep building more."

Certain species of shellfish need cold water to thrive but with warming temperatures, many are not growing the way they used to, and some not at all.

Galician wine is famous too with protected Denomination of Origins like Rías Baixas, Ribeiro, and grapes like albariño and godello, but the proliferation of vineyards is taking its toll on the estuary too due to the chemicals used in the grape cultivation.

"People here used to earn a decent living wage, but not now, if we keep going like this then in five years all this will disappear," Otero says. 

"Before you could send your kids to university and actually plan for the future, now people are abandoning the sea.”

A 20-minute drive north to Compostela Beach and it's mainly women who seed and harvest famous Carril clams along this shoreline.

They are raking the seabed with raños or ganchas, long tools that they move almost like a rhythmic dance to collect clams big enough to keep. They are on the front lines of this developing disaster too, and tell a similar story to the mussel fishers.

"When I started there were 97 people working here and now there are exactly 59 of us left," says María Porto, president of the Carril Women's Fishers Association.

"We used to earn a decent wage, but not anymore. Now most of the women are leaving to look for jobs in supermarkets or whatever they can find."

But neither Maria nor Alfredo are giving up.

Alfredo adds: "We are micro companies, there is a distribution of wealth across the communities here and we're going to defend our way of life because this is our future, we don't work for anybody.

"We are already looking at how we survive with these adverse changes that are only going to get worse in the coming years.”