Danish historical fisheries data

We often hear or read in the media that many of the coastal fish stocks are in decline and local fishermen struggle to make a living, because of regulations or declining catches. But where do we come from? What was the size of the fisheries and the catch opportunities one hundred years ago?Catch and effort in varying data formats across time have been reported for the Danish fisheries since the late 1800. Based on these data, we will present an overview of the Danish fisheries going back ca. one hundred years. The effort information consists of yearly records of the number of fishers, number of vessels and the number of gears, creating a potential opening for estimating long catch-per-unit-effort time series. An investigation of the Danish coastal fisheries at an even finer geographical scale is also made possible by these reports, at least for a shorter period up until the 1920s, where after the registrations by so-called “districts” ended. As part of this fine-scale investigation, we will focus on selected fjords on the east coast of Jutland, where the fisheries are very limited today, but also Jammerbugt, where fisheries are still succeeding today.