OEKO_015

An overview about development and legislative treatment of companionship fishing in Germany



Thomas Meinelt1,2, Michael Winkel1 & Robert Arlinghaus3

1 German Anglers Association (DAV), Weißenseer Weg 110, 10369 Berlin
2 Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Department of Inland Fisheries, Müg-gelseedamm 301, 12587 Berlin, Germany, meinelt@igb-berlin.de,
3 IGB, Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes

Germany is a nation with a federal structure, consisting of 16 federal states. All federal states have their own fisheries laws. However, the Animal Welfare Act covers the fisheries laws as it is binding for whole Germany! Additionally Animal Welfare is part of the constitution! Therefore, animals share the rights of humans! Some key facts of the German Animal Welfare Act:

§ 1... nobody is permitted to inflict pain, suffering or damages to animal without a "reasonable reason".

§ 4 (1). The killing of an animal is only permitted to somebody who has the knowledge to appropriately kill that animal without causing avoidable pain and suffering. In Germany therefore a special fishing license is necessary before one is permitted to fish recreationally. This licence can only be gathered by attending a 30 hours course and passing an official angling examination.

§ 17. With a prison up to two years or fine will be penalized who:

  1. is killing an animal without a "reasonable reason".

  2. is inflicting pain, suffering or damages to vertebrates because of brutality or who is inflicting long persisting or repetitive substantial pain or suffering to an animal.

Having a reasonable reason to fish is the key in order to avoid getting into trouble with the Animal Welfare Act. What is a reasonable reason? In the case of recreational fishing this reason may be: The use of the caught fish for personal consumption, or as a second reason might be the management of fish populations for ecological reasons. No other reason is at the moment considered "reasonable" in Germany. Fishing for fun or competition is definitely NOT a reasonable reason and therefore illegal in Germany! A senior public prosecutor defined cruelty to fish as follows:

Angling with life baitfish, keeping of life fish in keepnets, angling for fun without use of the fish as foodstuff (catch and release only) and competitive fishing in all variations!!!

Some words on how banning of competition began. In 1988 two competition organizers were convicted by law due to "cruelty to animals according to the animal welfare act". They organized a competition. During the competition the fish were kept in keepnets. That was the first point of cruelty. After the event the fish were transferred to a weighting point were they were weighed. That was the second point of cruelty. And now they made the most important mistake since the caught fish were released alive back into the water they had been fished from. They were neither used for any consumption nor for another accepted purpose. So the organizers and also the participants were found guilty by the court to have inflicted pain, suffering and/or damages to animals without a "reasonable reason" concerning § 1 of the animal welfare act. If they had used the fish as food for themselves or for the feeding of zoo-animals they would have been considered having a "reasonable reason" and thus would not have been found guilty. Today, for some judges and most animal welfare activists, competitive fishing means cruelty to animals, if the following points are met:

A meeting of anglers with the purpose to catch as much fish as possible or to catch a trophy fish within a time limit to gain a price.

The award of any price/cup deprives the "reasonable reason" to kill or hamper an animal. The killing of a fish for later consuming is the one and only "reasonable reason" for them but only if this is the main reason for recreational fishing. If the main reason is the competition between anglers the "reasonable reason" is not longer on the hand. Because there is no "reasonable reason" competitions are considered illegal with refer-ence to the animal welfare act. That's their strange logic…

However, the discussion would lead to nowhere, if German anglers would not be interested in fishing in a competitive environment, meaning that there is no demand for organizing fishing competitions. We have conducted a nationwide survey in Germany, in which some information of anglersinterest in competitions was gained and the satisfaction with different aspects of the fishing experience was measured.



Figure 1 


As you can see from figure 1, roughly 20 % of the organized anglers prefer competitive fishing over fishing experience without a competitive aspect. But, because officially competitive fishing in its traditional form is illegal, the opportunity to satisfy this demand is restricted in Germany. This is reflected in the satisfaction level with different aspects of the fishing experience, both catch and non-catch related. On the table, the mean satisfaction scores with different aspects of the fishing experience are shown.

The scale ranges from 1, (very dissatisfied) to 10, (very satisfied). Anglers were found to be particularly satisfied with non-catch aspects, e.g. the possibility to relax in the outdoors. What is interesting is, that satisfaction with the possibility to compete with other anglers, not surprisingly, was rated lowest of all satisfaction components. This low level of satisfaction is the result of the difficulty to fish in a competitive environment in Germany. Some anglers want to compete, however they could not satisfy this need adequately!

The question is now: Is fishing competitively today at least partly possible?

Yes it is. During the last decade, we observe tendencies of liberalization in Germany. In nearest publications of jurisprudence we may find statements as e. g. that from Meyer-Ravenstein that wrote 1993:
If fish irrespective of the form of recrea-tional angling are caught reasonably, all additional motives or reasons, even if they are "not reasonable", are irrelevant.

For example, if a reasonable reason is existent, then people may gather together and "compete" for the biggest or most fish." This perspective differs from the original presented perspective. Such a "reasonable reason", is the management of fish populations particularly the reduction of over-abundant zooplanktivorous fish by means of competition events. Some words about the background. Due to excessive nutrient inputs, inland waters in Germany are often euthrophic or polytrophic. In these waters, species of little fisheries value, mainly zooplanktivorous fish, flourish. Moreover, in Germany, professional fishers and anglers mainly remove top-predators for consumption. Additionally many artificial waters like channels and urban waters miss structures and in these waters the fish communities are dominated by zooplanktivorous fish species like bream, white bream, roach and small perch and dominate the fish biomass today. Because these species mainly feed on herbivorous zooplankton these waters are dominated by green and blue green algae. This sometimes leads to algal blooms. But, the condition that we want to have is a balanced food chain with predators that are feeding on small fish (figure 2).


Figure 2 


At this condition the large forms of zooplankton are dominating. The zooplancton is filtrating the small algae and water quality as O2, pH and water transparency can be improved.

Actually there are two ways to achieve this preferred condition.

The first is a top down regulation by stocking predators. However, we actually have a high fishing pressure on the predators and a high mortality of them.

Thus, the withdrawal of a part of the zooplanktivorous fish is another solution for this problem and that can be done for example by means of organizing fishing events called management fishing or companionship fishing.
Let us take the federal state Brandenburg as an example. In this state 90 % of the official registered events were management fishing and only 10 % had predators as target species. When anglers go for fishing in Brandenburg they have to list their catch and to announce that catch to the authorities. Officially the anglers in Brandenburg caught 34 tons of coarse fish in 2002 and 32 tons in 2003. In companionship events in 2002 nearly 29 tons of coarse fish were caught, in 2003, 26 tons. Therefore, unwanted zooplanktivorous fish are predominately removed by management fishing events, because normally anglers do not target these fish and remove mostly toppredators. If we take 2002 as an example 85 % of the coarse fish were caught in companionships and only 15 % were caught at non-companionships. That means that management fishing influences the mortality of the zooplanctivorous fish community as well as their reproduction. However, studies on the effects of this mortality on the fish communities are not available. Thus we can only speculate about the effectiveness of management fishing in relation to improvements of water quality and fish stock.

Acknowledgement: We wish to thank Norbert Schultz, from the Institute for Baltic Sea Fisheries and the guys from the German Anglers Association, particularly Klaus Piesker for their kindly help.


Table 1 


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