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brev, Danmarks Fiskeriforening, 30. november 2006
36. Jydske Vestkysten 1. marts 2007
37. Jydske Vestkysten 16. maj 2007
38. Fiskeritidende 15. juni 2007
39. Jydske Vestkysten 2. november 2007
40. Jydske Vestkysten 17. februar 2008
41. Kilde, bl. a. interviews med fiskeskipperne Svein Oskar-
son, Hans Esbersen og Jean Vad Christensen
42. Fiskeritidende 3. april 2008
Summary:
January 2008 was the sixtieth anniversary of the establish-
ment of the cooperative herring oil factory by the fishermen
of Esbjerg and its commencement of production of fishmeal
and fish oil. The fishmeal production and its associated in-
dustrial fishery came to distinguish the City of Esbjerg and
the harbour’s development for many years, but landings of
fish for industrial processing ceased at the end of 2007. In
future, the Esbjerg fishing boats were to land their catches
in Thyborøn, and Esbjerg’s era as Denmark’s biggest indu-
strial fishing harbour had ended. This article describes the
development of the industrial fishery in the period since
its beginning in 1948, with main emphasis on the develop-
ments which, after the year 2000, led to a dramatic decline
in Esbjerg’s trawler fleet and the cessation of landings and
fishmeal production.
Industrial fishing from Esbjerg developed during the
1950s into an all-year activity concentrated on herring,
sand eels and Norway pout. The fishery was not popular
with the other countries bordering the North Sea, and in the
1970s, Danish fishermen were forced to accept a prohibition
against industrial fishing for herring because of a decline in
the populations. Sand eels then became the economically
most important industrial fish species, followed by sprats,
which replaced the herring as the target species for indu-
strial fishermen. At the beginning of the 1970s there were
about 370 trawlers engaged in industrial fishing in Esbjerg.
This number fell to between 60 and 70 significantly bigger
vessels in the mid-1990s because of major changes in the
market which made it difficult for small and medium-size
vessels to maintain a rational operating economy. The fish-
meal factories in Esbjerg underwent several mergers, and
in 1989 the last two big units merged into one company,
which itself merged in 1997 and 2000 with its competitors
in Hvide Sande and Thyborøn respectively, so that the en-
tire west coast industrial fishing was now gathered together
in one fleet supplying the same company under the name
TripleNine Fish Protein. Given the overcapacity in the
Danish fishing fleet, it was economically very difficult to
implement generational changes and to renew vessels in the
trawler fleet: the most recent extensions to Esbjerg’s trawler
fleet were made in the mid-1980s.
The biggest and economically most solid boats in
Esbjerg’s trawler fleet combined industrial fishing with
fishing for herring and mackerel for human consumption
from the end of the 1980s, and when Denmark introduced
regulation via individual transferable quotas (ITQs) in 2003
to revitalise and renew the fleet, a lively trade in vessels and
quotas arose. 2003 was also the first of three consecutive
years with a poor sand eel season, and in 2004 and 2005,
the industrial fleet suffered major economic problems. This
was a major reason for the sales of those vessels which
had herring and mackerel quotas, and in many cases the
fishing rights were sold out of the city to owners in north
Jutland harbours. In 2007, the remaining industrial vessels
were forced to stop fishing for sand eels in the middle of
the best season since 2002. Triple Nine thus lost confidence
in the future possibility of permission to increase the per-
mitted catches, and together with a revival of the conflict
with loaders and ongoing concern about potential future en-
vironmental requirements concerning odour in relation to
Esbjerg Harbour’s other interests, the situation was decisive
for the decision to stop production of fishmeal and fish oil in
Esbjerg and move all landings to Thyborøn. Esbjerg retained
an extraction plant for the removal of dioxin from fishmeal
and fish oil, storage facilities, and a new plant for the pro-
duction of the company’s latest product, phospholipids. At
the beginning of 2009, Esbjerg’s trawler fleet consisted of
nine vessels, six of which were pure industrial vessels, while
three also had shares in the herring and mackerel quotas.