Flashes of fish prices, such as what happened during the Christmas campaign or the record last paid in Avilés rule. first hundred kilo tuna of the year – 369 euros per kilo – are simple anecdotes that, in the view of fishermen, given media coverage, may confuse the public and create the false impression that seafood has a high economic value.
Nothing could be further from the truth, for the prices of the main types of commercial interests sold in Asturian rules are now very similar to those of twenty years ago, and some even lower. “Fish should be the only food.or it gets more expensive as time goes on, but the cost of catching it continues to rise; this situation is logically unsustainable,” explains one of the shipowners this newspaper consulted.
LA NUEVA ESPAÑA, a newspaper owned by the same group, Prensa Ibérica, analyzed the evolution of prices for five of the fish to confirm what was true in the fishing complaint. The main fishery of the Asturian fleet (hake, bonito, xarda, mackerel and bocarte) as well as fisherman’s diesel.
Hake and anchovy are currently paid at a lower average price than in 2004; Bonito and mackerel gained less than 25 percent in value, and it can only be said that xarda’s price doubled its value and acted on the economy.
Faced with this “freezing” and even falling fresh fish prices, diesel, the main cost of most fishing boats, saw a 231 percent increase (almost tripling in value). Discount even the effect of the last period energy crisis arising from the war in Ukraine, the price of fuel would become 100 percent more expensive in the last 17 years, which means paying exactly double for each refueling.
“It doesn’t sound to me like we’re paying twice as much for diesel, but there’s no doubt we’re making a lot less money hunting the same pounds than we did ten or fifteen years ago”, It draws attention to an experienced fisherman living in Avilés.
And whoever catches them is about to fish “the same weight” because some species with a maximum catch quota, such as the Volanta hake, are in a restrictive dynamic that condemns the fleet to reduce its extraction effort.
Prices got cheaper
Returning to the statistical analysis, the average price of a kilo of hake, the fish of choice for Spaniards, is 5.22 euros in 2004 and 3.82 in 2021 under Asturian rules; devalued 37 percent. Worse still, it paid an average of 4.74 euros per kilo in 2005 and half, 2.01 euros last year.
In the case of Bocarte, it should be noted that the condition of the stock 18 years ago was much worse than it is today, and fewer tons were caught which translated into higher prices due to the law of supply and demand. However, this rule is not strictly followed in other fisheries, where erratic decreases in supply do not necessarily translate into price increases.
In these two decades, bonito has appreciated by 23.3 percent (from an average of EUR 3.22 to 3.97 per kg) and mackerel by 21 percent (from EUR 0.76 to 0.92 per kg). However, this appreciation of the value of these two species is far from expected: the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the reference for the items most frequently used in Spanish households, the consumer price index (CPI) rose 49 percent between January 2000 and December 2020.
Fuel saving
And in the face of this evolution in the prices of fish, which is the only source of income for any ship, that of diesel is on the rise: today shipowners pay almost four times more for each liter of fuel than they did twenty years ago.
The need for fuel savings thus explains why the fleet has delayed the start of the xarda coast this year or why some ship owners have refused to participate in the “bonito race” consisting of sailing to the Azores (800 miles). albacore schools
The volatile development of fresh fish and fuel prices also explains why more and more shipowners are throwing in the towel and shutting down operations or selling their boats, fed up with balancing numbers for an increasingly smaller economic return.
The rule is “within a week” waiting for the better
The first shipment of bonito caught in the year, as it is known, arrived on time, and the tradition of successful auctions continued: On Wednesday, June 1, the Galician fishing vessel “Siempre Peco” landed. Avilés rule paid 2,076 kilos and the Alimerka supermarket chain paid a record price of 369 Euros for each kilo of the first tub.
But now that the beach’s opening fest is over, what marketers and consumers are wondering is when will albacore’s regular landfalls begin to supply fishermen.
Sources on the Avilés route estimate that several ships to the Azores will arrive by the end of this week or the beginning of the next. From the fish market, they say, “Fishermen say schools are hard to find, but they’re starting to catch them.”