a very hard summer marked by the weather, bans and toxins

As summer approaches, more and more people think of the estuaries of Galicia as a place to spend time. a few weeks of relaxationbetween beaches, good food and a tolerable heat. What is much more difficult (even demoralizing) these months is to think of the Galician estuaries as pantries of seafood. The brotherhoods that work in the area have encountered a perfect storm which has complicated their work and has forced the Xunta to come to his rescue.

This reality is already being noticed in the markets.

What has happened? These are not good times for the shellfish harvesters who dedicate themselves to combing the Galician estuaries in search of clams or cockles, nor are they good times for the fishermen who they catch fresh octopus or companies that operate mussel trays. The most curious thing is that it is not due to a single factor, but to a sum of conditions, a challenging scenario for the union that The Confidential recently summarized (with a good eye) like the particular “Via Crucis of Galician shellfish.” Toxins, bans and storms seem to have joined forces to complicate life for the sector.

looking back. To understand the situation that the union is going through, you have to go back at least a few years, to 2023when the heavens rained down (literally) the shellfish harvesters’ business. In 2023, the sector first encountered an unusual heat wave that was followed, in autumn, by a succession of intense rainfall that they wreaked havoc among bivalve populations. In 2025 things seemed to improve, but the outlook became complicated again at the beginning of this year.

“Last year there were signs of recovery with a significant pre-commercial stock that could not withstand the impact of the train of eight consecutive storms that hit our coast between January and February of this year,” they explain from the Consellería do Mar de Galicia.

The logic is simple: it rains heavily, the flow of the rivers increases, the reservoirs open their floodgates and all that mass of fresh water ends up flowing suddenly into the estuaries, affecting, among other things, the salinity of the seabed and affecting its fauna. And that impacts catastrophically in the work of those dedicated to collecting cockles, clams or razor clams.

Is it that serious? Yes. Both for its consequences on marine fauna and for its economic and social implications. In fact, in 2023, faced with a similar scenario, it was already warned that the high mortality rate of shellfish was leading thousands of families to a “very distressing situation” and an “uncertain future.”

For reference, in March the biologist Liliana Solís shared with elDiario the results of the first sampling carried out on the banks of the Muros and Noia estuaries after the storms at the beginning of 2026: in the case of the cockle the mortality was 89%, in the case of the japonica clam 66%, in the slimy clam 96% and 31% in the fine clam.

“The worst crisis”. Shortly after, in April, The Voice of Galicia did a review through the different sandy areas of the community that he headed with an eloquent headline: “Galician estuaries: I check one by one in the face of the worst shellfish crisis.” Their analysis indicated that the most affected areas were those of Arousa, Vigo and Muros-Noia, although the outlook was not very encouraging in the estuaries of Pontevedra or A Coruña either.

The ‘photo’ has chiaroscuros (in Vigo and Baiona, clam captures from boats alleviated the decline in shellfish harvesting on foot), but in general it shows a complicated panorama.

So much so, that the Xunta has already made a move. This same week the Minister of the Sea, Marta Villaverde, explained in the Parliament of Galicia the measures deployed to “reverse the effects of the storms on the shellfish banks.” Its “central piece,” he defended, is a plan of almost 23 million euros to regenerate sandy beaches and support families in the union. Shellfish harvesters who participate in recovery tasks actually receive compensation of up to 700 euros per month.

Do we have data? Yes. The Pesca de Galicia platform, which basically works with “first sale” data in the fish markets, shows a noticeable fall in bivalves during the first months of the year. For example, if in April 2025 it registered 238,544 kilos, in the same month of this year there were only 147,730. Something similar happens with crustaceans.

This same week Vigo Lighthouse revealed that until May, 788 tons of mollusks valued at 9.7 million have been shipped in the markets, which translates into falls of 29 and 26%, respectively, and the worst start to the year so far this century. The ‘prick’ of the japonica clam, cockle and fine clam stands out above all, with declines that are around or even exceed 50%.

The economic balance for the sector is compensated, in part, by the increase in the price of certain species, which in the face of a shortage have seen their price was shot in wholesale channels.

Something more than storms. We said it at the beginning of the report: the big problem in the sector is that does not deal with a single challenge. The adverse weather of 2026 may not have made it easy for Galician shellfish harvesters, but that is not the only headache for the sector.

In May the markets saw how it was activated a ban for the fresh octopus that will continue for another month, until july. All with the aim of recovering a species that has also gone through low hours in the estuaries of Galicia and meets increasing competition arrival from other regions.

If that were not enough, add the “red tide”which has forced the closure of some 3,400 punts of mussels, the pressure exerted on prices by merchandise arriving from other countries (fishermen have reached return captures to the sea to avoid a collapse in the price) and changes in consumption habits that do not favor fish. For some time now there have been signs that show that we are increasingly consuming less fresh genre in our homes, which explains why in recent years they have closed thousands of fishmongers.

Images |Juantiagues (Flickr) and Galician Fishing

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