Yesterday morning, news spread across the region that Croats and Italians were arrested in Dalmatia for smuggling date shells, shellfish whose fishing is prohibited in all Mediterranean countries such as Slovenia, Montenegro, Italy, Albania, Greece,and France.
But, in our country date shells caught in Neum are still not banned, on the contrary, it is a “specialty” in many Herzegovinian restaurants.
In order to better understand why the aforementioned countries have banned fishing for date shells, it is important to get to know this shellfish and the conditions in which they live and grow.
The European date shell (Lithophaga lithophaga) is one of the most common and well-known bivalves in the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, including the Adriatic. In the rocks of the Adriatic, the maximum density of the colonies in which they live is around 1.500 individuals per square meter. But the average is much smaller, and it grows very slowly, so that a shell needs somewhere between 18 and 36 years to reach a length of about 5 cm.
Experts estimate that their lifespan is between 54 and 80 years, and their maximum length is between 8 and 12 cm. Large ones are mostly served, but those smaller than 7 cm rarely.
However, these shellfish are banned not because they take decades to reach a size acceptable for a plate, but because the seabed needs to be destroyed to get to the date shells that live deep in the rocks.
Namely, during their life in the rocks to which they have attached themselves with mucoprotein, they drill holes in which they grow, and it is mostly impossible to get them out of them. This gives them protection from natural predators, but not from people who take them out with various tools, even pneumatic hammers that run on air from a bottle.
Only in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) it is possible to, legally and without fear of draconian punishments, eat date shells, and considering that it is a “forbidden fruit”, their price is very high. A kilogram costs about 100 BAM, and for a portion in a restaurant you need to spend between 40 and 50 BAM.
It is an open secret that restaurants in Croatia also offer date shells, but, in a hidden way, under the table – if you are “closewith the waiter”, if you are a “boss” or if you are “good with the owner”.
Lovers of nature and the sea often claim that “enjoying date shells” is pure snobbish behavior, especially since the taste of these shellfish is very similar to the taste of those that are legal, such as scallops, oysters or mussels, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
