Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Spanish seafood sector

Abstract

This paper aims to develop an assessment of the COVID-19 impact on key maritime sectors (small-scale and large fisheries) in Spain, one of the most important maritime regions in the world. We synthesize multiple data sources from across the seafood supply chain to show the relative seafood sector responses and variables of recovery during the pre-COVID-19 period (2015–2019) and during the pandemic (2020). Our results show that the reported landings made in 2020 by the different Spanish fleets (786,900 t) represented an 11 % reduction compared to the annual average landed between 2015 and 2019. On average, the fishing effort of the small-scale fishing fleets suffered a higher decline (16 %) related to the large-scale fleet (5 %), but the large-scale fleet experienced a higher reduction (25 %) in landing value between the pre-COVID-19 and pandemic. Although the decrease in catches affected almost all the Spanish-studied regions, the reductions were especially relevant in the Basque Country (-14 %) and Galicia (-11 %), since they are the main fishing regions responsible for 76 % of Spanish landings. The volume and value of imports and exports of fresh, frozen, and canned products in 2020 did not change (±5 %) compared to the previous period (2015-2019) but seafood trade was affected by country of origin and destination and by Autonomous Community. Overall, our study highlights that the fisheries sector in Spain was also able to implement a range of adaptive strategies, such as diversification of species portfolios or distribution of seafood door-to-door which appeared swiftly to compensate for the vanishing restaurant markets.