The brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) and the German shrimp fishery share one thing in common: they survive from year to year. After two years of historically low catches, shrimp stocks have risen once again, which fishermen are exploiting immediately – spending as much time on the North Sea as possible. But will this help them?
There are no catch quotas for brown shrimp in the EU, despite recommendations from scientists at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).
The one-year-old females, which make up the majority of the catch, reach sexual maturity at a length of approximately 50–55 mm, meaning the entire stock is sustained by just a single generation. However, the size of the shrimp in the nets is constantly declining: while shrimp over 60 mm in length still accounted for around 30% of catches around 1950, they made up only 15% in 2023. If the total weight of the catches remains equally high (around 30,000 tonnes across the entire North Sea in good years), more individual organisms are therefore being caught.
Despite increasingly efficient nets, the catch volume in relation to engine power and fishing effort (time spent at sea) is constantly shrinking: in just 20 years, it decreased by approximately 40%. A short and sharp reduction in fishing activity would be the wisest approach, ICES writes in its recommendation.
"We thought shrimp would never return to our fishing grounds," reports the fisheries association – but if the currently burgeoning generation of brown shrimp is fished out now, this may well become a reality in the near future.
Sources:
ICES (2025): Working Group on Crangon Fisheries and Life History (WGCRAN; outputs from 2024 meeting). https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.28638743
NDR (23.10.2025): Krabben sind zurück an der Küste: Fischer holen Rekordfänge ein.
