Istanbul anglers keep up tradition despite stocks alarm

Istanbul: After half a century of fishing, 65year- old Fuat, a retired Turkish civil servant, is nostalgic for the good old days when the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul teemed with fish.

Wearing a black woolly hat, Fuat is one of hundreds of amateur anglers passing their spare time on the Galata Bridge on the European side of Istanbul, trying to fill their buckets.

“I’ve been fishing since I was 15 years old,” he told AFP as he cast his line over the waters at the confluence of the Bosphorus with the Golden Horn, overlooked by the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque.

“In the past, there were many fish, the human population was lower,” he said.

“Those fish are gone now. Those beautiful fish are gone because of the increasing population and careless fishing.”

The

sight of thousands of amateur anglers crammed shoulder- toshoulder on the Galata Bridge and on the banks of the Bosphorus all the way from the Marmara to the Black Sea is, for many, one of the iconic images of Istanbul.

While Istanbul is changing at breakneck speed with unimpeded developments, the scenes of fishing are hardly different from those taken in grainy black- and- white pictures from the 1950s.

The careless bycatch of fish species and keeping juvenile fish after they are caught — officially illegal — have put the Bosphorus ecosystem in a perilous condition. Erol

Orkcu, head of the amateur and sports fishing association in Istanbul, said there has been a significant increase in the number of amateur fishermen compared to the past as the city’s population boomed.

Fish stocks have decreased by around 50 per cent compared to the 1980s and 90s, he said.

Pollution and destructive fishing practices are among the major factors behind the reduction in fish stocks.

A study carried out by Deniz’s department showed 16 per cent of the anglers on the bridge are not true amateurs but are actually selling the fish they catch.