Environmental impact of fishing

With the conclusion of the fishing season in the Turkish seas, the annual hunting ban has commenced to ensure wildlife conservation and sustainable resource management.

In a statement declaring the fishing ban starting from April 15, Agriculture and Forestry Minister İbrahim Yumaklı said that this year's season witnessed a bountiful catching.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Food, in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Water, has enacted a comprehensive ban on fishing activities.

Members of the Black Sea Divers Sports Club stumbled upon the wreckage of a steamship at a depth of 50 meters, measuring approximately 100 meters in length, while conducting a dive to clean up ghost nets in the Black Sea.

Despite the abundance of anchovies, which have been caught in limited amounts in the Black Sea last year, experts are concerned about next year because of "excessive fishing."

With the start of the fishing season in the Eastern Black Sea on Sept. 1, fishermen continue to cast their nets into the sea.

The Agriculture and Forestry Ministry has conducted approximately 67,000 inspections in the first half of the year as part of its campaign against illegal fishing, fining thousands of fishermen and workplaces who did not comply with the regulations.

In the first six months of 2023, the General Directorate of Fisheries and Aquaculture teams conducted 66,764 inspections.

The Balıkesir Municipality has stated that 50,000 square meters of ghost nets have been removed from the Aegean and Marmara seas over the past three years as part of a comprehensive campaign to combat the threats posed by these nets to marine biodiversity.

Divers from the Coast Guard Command on June 7 discovered Türkiye's largest ghost net, estimated to have been in the sea for at least a decade, in the Marmara Sea and collected it to recycle.

In line with the measures taken to clean the seas of abandoned fishing lines and nets, the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry has initiated a new project to recycle these ghost nets for using them in manufacturing plastic parts of white goods.

A few days prior to the start of the fishing ban, fishermen say this season has not been productive, while an expert attributes the decrease in the species in Marmara to overfishing and pollution.

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias has sent a letter to Vice President of the European Commission and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell calling for the implementation of the regulation banning imports of fish from Turkey into the EU due to the practice of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing by Turkish vessels in Greek terri