Shrimp farming calls for direct aid to survive

The intense rains caused by a series of storms in Galicia at the start of 2026 have "buried" the shellfish sector, which is experiencing an "agonizing" moment and assures that, without urgent direct aid, it will not survive. "The year 2023 left us practically all in the ICU, this year has finished burying us," warned on Monday the major patron of A Illa, Juan José Rial Millán, at a press conference in Vilagarcía de Arousa (Pontevedra) with representatives of the shellfish sector in this estuary. The situation is so critical that they want to request the declaration of a disaster zone, but they cannot do so until the official sampling data from the Xunta on the state of the banks are available. The shellfish gatherers believe that the official data will confirm what the brotherhoods have already seen in the sandbanks, full of dead shellfish. In some areas they have observed 100% mortality and in others 70%, depending on the depth, according to the president of the shellfish ...