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Posted by : John Ross on Jun 02, 2006 - 11:00 PM environment

The Cantabrian anchovy is in imminent danger of extinction. Catches have fallen to levels which make biologists suspect that its biomass is on the threshold of viability, i.e., even if an immediate, complete stop is put to fishing, there may be so few anchovies left that stocks will never recover. In the sixties, catches of up to 80,000 tons were recorded in the Bay of Biscay, but overfishing reduced the production in local fisheries to less than a twentieth of that in 2003, leading to a European Union-declared ban. This was lifted this year, but the Cantabrian fishing fleet put into port early last month after landing little more than 700 tons in the entire season and fishermen's organizations, scientists, ecological organizations like Greenpeace and local politicians are unanimously calling upon the central government to reintroduce the ban. The news comes, ironically, just as the Cantabrian fishing town of Santoña, famous precisely for its anchovies, is about to hold its annual Feria de la Anchoa de Cantabria. Read on, or visit Cantabria.

The Cantabrian Sea, especially the Bay of Biscay, is the most important fishing ground for the European anchovy, prized in Spain not as a pizza topping but in its own right, salt-cured to make the anchoa, often served with a slice of tomato on bread as a tapa, or as the boquerón, sometimes considered a "raw" anchovy (wrongly - the boquerón has, in fact, been lightly cured by marinating in vinegar, oil and garlic).

The question now is less whether the ban will be reintroduced (it will also have to be applied to the French fishing fleet) than if it will be in time. In addition to the wretched size of this year's harvest, the Basque marine observatory Azti has recently estimated that the total anchovy biomass in the Bay of Biscay is not much more than 20,000 tons. At such levels, the European anchovy is in real danger of disappearing altogether.