Diversifying income streams

Zakuska, a spread made of vegetables, is found in one form or another across the Balkans. The ingredients and spices may vary somewhat but the concept remains the same. A company, Sat Vacanţă Gura Portiţei SRL, in Jurilovca south of the Danube delta adds different fish species to its version of zakuska with excellent results.

Sat Vacanţă Gura Portiţei SRL is a company whose main activity is tourism. e company runs a restaurant and rents cottages to tourists on a reef that separates a large lake complex south of the Danube Delta from the Black Sea. e facilities are open in the season from 1 May to 30 September or 15 October. In 2018 Gabriel Cristi, the owner of the company, used support from the European Maritime, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Fund to build a small sh processing facility in the village of Jurilovca. e facility was in fact a shermen’s shelter that Mr Ditu remodelled and equipped to process sh. e idea behind the processing facility was to process sh in exactly the way it was required by the restaurant. Before it was established Mr Ditu had to deal with other processors who would cut and prepare the sh as he requested. But they were not able to cut the sh exactly the way we wanted, he says, which was why we nally decided to invest in our own facility.

Freshwater species and fish from the Black Sea

e facility started operating in February this year processing sh bought from the local shermen. e sh is typically caught in Lake Razim, the largest lake in a complex of coastal several lakes or lagoons. e initial processing operations are heading, gutting, and removing the tail. e facility is also equipped with band saws with which frozen sh can be sawed into pieces. e sh can then be packed into bags which are vacuum sealed before being introduced into a chamber where the sh is rapidly frozen. e production is usually fresh, but in May and June shing is prohibited in the lake as a sheries management measure. To continue to supply guests at the restaurant with sh and to make the value added products at the factory even during these months some sh must be frozen during the season. Only a small fraction of the sh comes from the Black Sea. It is expensive, says Mr Ditu. Here in the northern part of the Romanian Black Sea a sher needs as least six people to place the gear in the water, he needs a boat with a fairly powerful engine, a tractor on the shore to manoeuvre the boat, all of which adds to the cost of shing in the Black Sea.

For four years from 2016 to 2019 Mr Ditu’s company had a shing net on the Black Sea. Catches were best in the rst year and gradually declined over subsequent years. Finally, when one of the shers left to work in Ireland, Mr Ditu decided to stop the activity. According to him, there are shers on the southern coast of the Romanian Black Sea who have been active for many years, but catches are far better there than in the north. In the north, for example, we never see gar sh, but in the south they can catch it regularly. Here we nd mainly anchovies and horse mackerel and there are perhaps 10 shers catching Danube shad. But in general in the north part of the Romanian Black Sea, catches are low partly because the costs are high, but also because several shers decided to decommission their vessels and pull out of shing altogether. at was a mistake, says Mr Ditu, because it essentially destroyed the industry. Whether the low catches in the northern part of the Romanian Black Sea are because of a lack of vessels or a lack of sh, Mr Ditu is not sure. In conversations with vessel owners, he learned that at depths of 15 m there were schools of sh in the water. Most shers have their gear at 5-6 m and here the catches have just declined from year to year. In 2019 Mr Ditu and two other shers had nets at 4, 6, and 8 m respectively, but the production from all the nets was the same. All the three shers pulled out of the activity that year.

Imported fish is also processed for the restaurant

Some of the supply of sh to the processing plant still comes from the Black Sea, but it comes from the southern part, from Constanta and the surrounding area. Other supplies are imported, for example, sturgeon from Italy and fresh anchovies from Greece. Mr Ditu is enthusiastic about the Greek product. We get anchovies from the Black Sea as well and they are very tasty, but the Greek anchovies have a longer shelf life, he says. is may have something to do with the fact that salinity in the Black Sea is lower than in the Aegean. It means, however, that if the local sh is not processed within a few hour it must be discarded, while anchovies from Greece can be stored for 48 hours without trouble. ey can even be gutted one day and lleted the next. From Lake Razem Mr Ditu obtains some cat sh, common carp, and pike-perch. ese three species amount to just under a third of the total supply. e lake has been a big supplier of these species, but in the last 10-15 years resources have been declining partly because of poaching. Catches of what Mr Ditu terms non-valuable species, crucian carp, bream, and roach, which he also uses in his production, are more or less stable however. e number of shers in the lake is also declining as shers move to other jobs or to other countries. Currently in the village there are about 30 shers who have a licence. Gill nets are the most common gear to catch the sh. Purse seines operated by hand were also used but now there is not enough sh to justify the use of this gear. Mr Ditu hopes that the resource situation on the lake improves in the future but it is impossible to predict. For the moment there is enough sh to supply the restaurant and the local market where Mr Ditu sells his products. We have no intention of supplying to the retail chains because the capacity of the facility is limited. We want to start supplying to other restaurants because this is an area for tourists and in the season there are a number of restaurants that cater to them. e season covers late spring, summer, and early fall. At other times the weather is characterised by a lot of wind and a damp cold that is severe even though the temperature does not fall below freezing point.

High content of fish in the zakuska

At the facility the fish is cut into pieces, the vegetables are chopped and everything is mixed by machine and finally filled (manually) into jars. The jars are placed in a vacuum machine to seal them and are then labelled and stored. The brand on the jars, Gura Porti ţ ei, is the same as the name of the restaurant and the cottages so that tourists can make a connection between the product and the services. The zakuska is made with catfish, sturgeon, or the low value species, but the fish content is always 60. Mr Ditu plans to open a shop to sell the products, but this will not be in the facility but closer to the harbour where there is more traffic. Another product is fried and marinated fish for which the cheaper species, crucian carp, bream, and roach, are mainly used. Unlike marine fish which retain their texture when marinated untreated, freshwater fish need to be fried before they can be placed in the marinade due to the physiological properties of the flesh. Since production has just started the levels are still modest and all of it is sold locally. But Mr Ditu has plans to approach markets further afield once he can increase the volumes and ensure that they remain at the same level throughout the year.

Sat Vacan Gura Porti ei SRL

Jurilovca

Romania

Tel.: +40 724 568674 ghe_gabriel@yahoo.com https://guraportitei.ro/en/

Director: Gabriel Ditu

Activity: Tourist cottage rental, restaurant, fish processing

Products: Zakuska with fish marinated

Packaging: Glass jars; plastic tubs; vacuum-sealed bags

Main fish species: Common carp, pike-perch, catfish, crucian carp, bream, roach, sturgeon

Customers: Fish shops, restaurants in and around Jurilovca

Raw material for processing: 50 tonnes of fish a year

Sources: Lake Raizem, Black Sea, imports