Die Fischwirtschaft in den norddeutschen Küstenländern: Bedeutung und Entwicklungstendenzen im räumlichen Kontext

Abstract

In contrast to the minor importance within the overall economy, the fishing industry still plays an important part in the regional economy of the northern German coastal Länder. It has to be kept in mind that the fishing industry which is spatially concentrated there employs 48 000 persons and has an annual turnover of about DM 11,3 thousand millions (in 1992). Among the five nothern German coastal Länder there are in fact some structural differences with respect to the locational distribution: while in Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lower Saxony all fishing industry branches are still represented, there are only some branches of the fishing industry left in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. Finally,quite different activities are subsumed under the heading "fishing industry",such as deep-sea fishing and inshore fishing, transportation, mariculture, import and marketing of raw fish, but also the fish-processing industry, fish gastronomy and forwardly and backwardly linked service sectors. Starting from a brief review of the development of the fishing industry in the reunified Germany, this paper deals in detail with the situation of the different fishing industry branches in the coastal Länder situated on the Baltic Sea and on the Northern Sea. The paper is focussed on developmental trends which are indeed sectorially and regionally different.