SPAIN
Puerto De Celeiro S.A.OPP 77, a producer organisation specialised in fresh longlined hake
Environmental and quality product certifications The producer organisation Celeiro is named after the port in Galicia in the north west of Spain where it was established in 2014. It comprises a fleet of 25 vessels from 24-30 m in length fishing in community waters in Spain, France, west of Ireland, and west of Scotland, and the main target species is northern hake. The history of the PO goes back to 1994, when a group of vessel owners founded a company to manage the port of Celeiro and establish an auction. The purpose of these activities was to make the port and its facilities attractive enough to entice the fleet to land its catches in Celeiro.
Revitalising the port was the main objective The fleet was fishing all along the Cantabrian coast, says Jesús A. Lourido García, the manager of the PO, and landing the catch in the Basque Country or in La Coruña or at other ports. We wanted to bring the catches home to Celeiro and start a market and try to empower the area, which is very isolated (2.5 hours from the airport and 2 hours from the motorway) and very dependent on the fishery. The vessel owners did not only want to land and sell the fish in Celeiro, but also add value to it. These activities led over time to various companies establishing themselves in Celeiro to support the fishing vessels that were basing their activity in the port. Today, these companies are some 10 in number and supply a range of products and services to the fleet—chandlery, refrigeration and storage, frozen bait, telecommunications, and fish processing.
Jesús A. Lourido García, manager of the producer organisation, Puerto De Celeiro S.A.OPP 77.
Bringing the vessels back to Celeiro was part of a larger makeover of the whole fishery which included a greater focus on sustainability and reducing environmental impact. Before the move to Celeiro, the vessels were a mix of longliners and trawlers, now, however, the trawlers have converted to longliners as this is a relatively low impact fishery. The fishing is at a depth of 300-400 m and is carried out at night to avoid impact on seabirds. The other gear used by a few of the vessels is gillnets. Trawls are a traditional gear, no doubt, but fishing with
hooks is in the DNA of Celeiro, says Mr Lourido, and the fishers understood it was better for the whole image that we wanted to create if we returned to our origins.
Longlines offer selectivity and low environmental impact Fishing with longlines has other advantages too—it is much more selective with negligible unwanted catches, and the fish is very high quality. Hake caught with a longline is very black
because it has retained all its scales, while the same fish caught by trawl is a lighter colour as some of the scales get rubbed off in the trawl. The PO wanted to market itself as practitioners of a fishery that was focused on high quality hake caught in an environmentally friendly way and from a stock that was fished sustainably. For added credibility among its customers the PO went in for a quality certification, Galicia Calidade (Galician Quality), a label backed by the government of Galicia. In addition, the fishery is certified to the Friend of the Sea (FoS) &VSPl TI Magazine 2 / 2020
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