Fish farming Galician style

Working at the Viveiros, Ria de Vigo

Sometimes in Galicia it seems that everyone fishes at some scale. On two occasions we anchored in total peace with not a soul in sight, but were woken early the following morning by the sound of voices all around us – slightly alarming. Looking out of our hatch we found that we were literally surrounded by boats netting, shellfish dredging and people wading up to their armpits with cockle rakes. Farther offshore boats were plying back and forth to the viveiros, the floating wooden structures that support much of the shellfish farming.

This latter is a huge business – there are apparently more than 3000 viveiros in the Ria de Arosa alone, and ashore there are substantial processing freezing and canning plants that similarly boost employment in the area. At one port we visited, two large refrigerated ships were loading mussels, for export to Korea. Mussels are the mainstay of production, but other shellfish such as oysters and queen scallops are also being successfully farmed, whilst finfish such as turbot, sole and bream are being reared for the fresh fish trade.

Globally the picture seems to be following the same pattern. Fish farming is the fastest growing form of food production in the world, running at around 9% per year, and even more so in the USA (12-13%) where large offshore farms are being developed. It is already big business in many countries that are prime destinations that we either know well already or are high on our list of places to visit – Norway, Scotland, Canada, Chile – and is currently growing once again in Iceland after early failures. Declining catches of wild stocks and increasing demand for human consumption mean that this trend is hardly likely to be reversed in the near future. In the face of human need, job creation in remote areas and the imperative to remove pressure from wild fish stocks, how could that be otherwise. But there must undoubtedly be an environmental cost associated with such ‘mass development’, and it is something we all need to be aware of, knowing that as always there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The epicentre of fisheries

A fishing vessel entering Vigo

Leaving the Bay of Biscay behind is a notable pleasure for nearly all sailors. Biscay gets the full blast of the westerly winds that accompany the depressions that shuttle in from the Atlantic, and I’ve known several circumnavigators who had the worst battering of their entire voyage crossing the Bay – I even lost three friends many years ago somewhere near Cape Finisterre when the trimaran they were sailing broke up. It can be an unforgiving place.

So rounding the Cape marks a real milestone, one of the ‘Cape Horns’ that exists in every region. As is so often true, too, the wind strength rises at least one notch on the Beaufort scale off such Capes, and Finisterre was no exception, and we surfed around the corner with up to 30 knots of wind. But our yacht is built to face just such conditions, and she (and we) were perfectly comfortable.

We were also glad to be entering one of the first new areas that we had really been looking forward to, the Rias of Galicia. For those of you who don’t know the rias, they most resemble some of the west country rivers (like the Fal) although they are on a far larger scale, being more like the fjords of Norway size wise. Add to that a warm Atlantic climate, and they make a very attractive place to explore.

And they are all about fish and fishing. The Galicians are a very distinctive people, whose lives seem to revolve around the sea and its produce. Seafaring in all its forms is ingrained in them, whether through fishing, long distance shipping or shipbuilding. It’s certainly one of the most maritime regions I’ve ever visited, and some of the ports such as Vigo are amongst the worlds busiest fishing ports. And it’s also one of the foremost regions of the world involved in the development of fish farming, more of which in my next posting.