Madrid's central market 'Mercamadrid' reported 89 per cent fewer trucks arriving with fresh fish shipments on Tuesday. Usually 90 vehicles enter and supply the market but on Tuesday only 10 entered, market authorities announced.
The rising costs of energy, metals, manpower, transport, and so on, have conspired with the unfavourable foreign exchange developments of the year to make it an altogether tough time for the global seafood industry. Still, despite many sector hardships, the picture is hardly consistent.
Police clashed Wednesday with hundreds of fishermen protesting against the high cost of fuel outside the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels reported BBC.
The Salmon Infectious Anemia, ISA, virus keeps spreading in Chile according to the latest release from the country's Sernapesca, (Nacional Fisheries Service) reports the press from Puerto Montt.
Driven by rising consumption worldwide, the international trade in fish products is expanding at a rapid pace, according to an FAO paper presented on Monday at an intergovernmental meeting in Germany.
Companies from Iceland and Norway have begun exporting whale-meat to Japan. About 60 tons of meat from fin whales caught in the 2006 Icelandic hunt was reportedly sent with a much smaller amount of minke meat from Norway according to a report from BBC.
Thousands of fishermen in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Belgium are on strike protesting rising fuel prices. Union leaders said on Thursday Portugal's entire coastal fleet stayed in port on Friday, while in Spain, 7,000 fishermen held protests at the agriculture ministry.
The Argentine Senate unanimously approved on Wednesday a bill that severely sanctions fishing companies and their vessels illegally operating in the Argentine Sea (South West Atlantic), in other words without Argentine awarded licenses, reports the Buenos Aires press.
The price of fish landed in the United Kingdom could rise by an average of 23% in the next 12 to 18 months because of rising fuel prices, a government agency warns. Seafish says the cost of some types of fish could go up by as much as 50%.
Uruguayan companies can resume fish and sea produce exports to the European Union following on a positive report from the European Commission (EC) coordinated by the local Aquatic Resources Directorate, DINARA.