Galicia faces the biggest seafood crisis in years: a very harsh summer marked by the weather, bans and toxins

As summer approaches, more and more people think of the estuaries of Galicia as a place to spend a few weeks relaxing, between beaches, good food and tolerable heat. What is much more difficult (even demoralizing) these months is to think of the Galician estuaries as pantries of seafood. The brotherhoods that work in the area have encountered a perfect storm that has complicated their work and forced the Xunta to come to their rescue.

This reality is already being noticed in the markets.

What has happened? These are not good times for the shellfish harvesters who are dedicated to combing the Galician estuaries in search of clams or cockles, nor are they good times for the fishermen who capture fresh octopus or the companies that operate mussel rafts. The most curious thing is that it is not due to a single factor, but to a sum of conditions, a challenging scenario for the union that El Confidencial recently summarized (with a good eye) as the particular "Way of the Cross of Galician shellfish." Toxins, bans and storms seem to have joined forces to complicate life for the sector.

Looking back. To understand the situation that the union is going through, we have to go back at least a few years, to 2023, when the skies rained down (literally) the shellfish harvesters' business. In 2023, the sector first encountered an unusual heat wave that was followed, in autumn, by a succession of intense rainfall that wreaked havoc on bivalve populations. In 2025 things seemed to improve, but the outlook became complicated again at the beginning of this year.

"Last year there were signs of recovery with an important pre-commercial stock that could not withstand the impact of the train of eight consecutive storms that hit our coast between January and February of this year," they explain from the Galician Sea Department.

The logic is simple: it rains heavily, the flow of the rivers increases, the reservoirs open their floodgates and all that mass of fresh water ends up flowing suddenly into the estuaries, affecting, among other things, the salinity of the seabed and affecting its fauna. And that has a catastrophic impact on the work of those dedicated to collecting cockles, clams or razor clams.

Is it that serious? Yes. Both for its consequences on marine fauna and for its economic and social implications. In fact, in 2023, faced with a similar scenario, it was already warned that the high mortality of shellfish was leading thousands of families to a "very distressing situation" and an "uncertain future."

As a reference, in March the biologist Liliana Solís shared with elDiario the results of the first sampling carried out on the banks of the Muros and Noia estuaries after the storms at the beginning of 2026: in the case of the cockle, mortality was 89%, in the japonica clam, 66%, in the slimy clam, 96%, and 31% in the fine clam.

"The worst crisis." Shortly after, in April, La Voz de Galicia reviewed the different sandy areas of the community that it headed with an eloquent headline: "Galician estuaries: I check one by one in the face of the worst shellfish crisis." Their analysis indicated that the most affected areas were those of Arousa, Vigo and Muros-Noia, although the outlook was not very encouraging in the estuaries of Pontevedra or A Coruña either.

The 'photo' has chiaroscuros (in Vigo and Baiona, clam captures by boat alleviated the decline in shellfish fishing on foot), but in general it shows a complicated panorama.

So much so, that the Xunta has already made a move. This same week, the Minister of the Sea, Marta Villaverde, explained in the Parliament of Galicia the measures deployed to "reverse the effects of the storms on the shellfish banks." Its "central piece," he defended, is a plan of almost 23 million euros to regenerate sandy beaches and support families in the union. Shellfish harvesters who participate in recovery tasks actually receive compensation of up to 700 euros per month.

Do we have data? Yes. The Pesca de Galicia platform, which basically works with "first sale" data in the fish markets, shows a noticeable drop in bivalves during the first months of the year. For example, if in April 2025 it registered 238,544 kilos, in the same month of this year there were only 147,730. Something similar happens with crustaceans.

This same week, Faro de Vigo revealed that as of today, 788 tons of mollusks valued at 9.7 million have been shipped to the fish markets, which translates into drops of 29 and 26%, respectively, and the worst start to the year so far this century. The 'prick' of the japonica clam, cockle and fine clam stands out above all, with declines that are around or even exceed 50%.

The economic balance for the sector is offset, in part, by the increase in the price of certain species, which in the face of scarcity have seen their price skyrocket in wholesale channels.

Something more than storms. We said it at the beginning of the report: the big problem in the sector is that it does not deal with a single challenge. The adverse weather of 2026 may not have made it easy for Galician shellfish harvesters, but that is not the only headache for the sector.

In May, the markets saw a ban on fresh octopus being activated that will continue for another month, until July. All with the aim of recovering a species that has also gone through low times in the estuaries of Galicia and is facing increasing competition from other regions.

If that were not enough, add the "red tide", which has forced the closure of some 3,400 mussel boats, the pressure exerted on prices by merchandise arriving from other countries (fishermen have even returned catches to the sea to avoid a collapse in prices) and changes in consumer habits that do not favor fish. There have been signs for some time that we are consuming less and less fresh produce in our homes, which explains why thousands of fishmongers have closed in recent years.

Images |Juantiagues (Flickr) and Galician Fishing