People in Dire Straits along Istanbul’s Bosphorus are waiting for fish because the annual mass migration, which has been late this year, of finned creatures as they head south from the cooling waters of the Black Sea toward the warmth of the Aegean. To make the journey, however, the bluefish, bonito, sea bass, horse mackerel and other species have to crowd from the open sea into the tiny Bosphorus strait, just 820 yards wide at its narrowest, past an estimated 10,000 waiting rods and nets on any given day.
Anglers, from women in head scarves to men in wool suits, pack so tightly along the Bosphorus that on some stretches they’re less than a yard apart. Anglers routinely pull up 10 little fish at a time on their multiple-hook lines. Mustafa Kokos, head of one of the main commercial fishing co-operatives on the Bosphorus, referring to the narrow throat of the 20-mile strait, said it is called the Central Bank.
But the Central Bank is running out of gold. Mahir Ersin, who fishes for small quantities in his tiny boat says that while little fish are abundant, the tuna are long gone, as are the swordfish, large bonito and Atlantic mackerel that used to make the run when he fished here with his father in the 1950s and ’60s.
Kokos said that if the big fish aren’t crossing the Bosphorus anymore, that’s not because of overfishing, but because of the pollution dumped into the sea by a city that has grown more than 10 times in size since 1955.
