The oceans are a primary source of food for mankind, and fishing
provides 200 million people with income, as meager as it may be, but a
growing a demand and the industrial-scale exploitation of the seas are
destroying global fish populations. The European Union's quota system
is partly to blame.
Dawn creeps across the horizon as the Pinkis brothers' cutter
returns to the harbor at Kuhlungsborn. The Baltic is still calm, but
wind from the northeast has already picked up sharply, a sign of the
storms in the evening forecast. The Pinkis brothers and their crew have
been out since 2 a.m., 10 nautical miles off the coast of northeast
Germany's Mecklenburg region, in a spot where they had staked hundreds
of nets into the sea floor the previous afternoon, hoping the fish
would come.
The brothers' cutter is small, less than 10 meters (33 feet) long, with
a tiny bridge on top and a large fish tank in the hold below. Two
stake-net fishermen stand on the deck, wearing bright orange oilcloth
clothing. The boat has hardly docked at the wharf before they begin
shoveling the catch from the hold, mostly flounder and codfish, even a
lone turbot. The catch amounts to 200 kilograms (440 lbs.), the fruits
of a day's labor - a day that can sometimes last 20 hours. Six days a
week.
They're the only fishermen docked in Kuhlungsborn harbor this
morning, a lone cutter among sailboats and yachts. The fishing harbors
along Germany's coast have been emptied. There are about 3,700 ocean
fishermen left in Germany today, many of them getting on in years. The
Pinkis brothers are among the youngest members of the Wismarbucht
fishing cooperative. Uwe Pinkis is 45, and his brother Klaus is 42.
Fishing, in Germany, is a dying profession.
When Klaus Pinkis is asked whether it's possible to make a living from
200 kilos of fish a day, he puts down his dip net, pushes his cap up
from his forehead and takes a deep breath. He looks at his brother for
a long moment and says: "We're doing well, but there are others, many,
in fact, who are getting really nervous and are on the verge of
qualifying for welfare."
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