Welcome to SWIMWAY Wadden Sea

The trilateral Wadden Sea is a highly dynamic area, providing shelter from predators and rich feeding grounds for a host of fish species. Present long-term data sets used for determining conservation strategies and targets only go back as far as 1960, a period in which the area was already under extensive anthropogenic pressure. To be able to set realistic targets for conservation strategies aimed at pre-defined objectives such as the trilateral fish-targets, additional data is required that go further back in time.

In the past months, a team of experts and students from DTU Aqua (Denmark), the University of Kiel (Germany), Groningen University (Netherlands) and the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat (CWSS) worked on the reconstruction of the historical fish assemblage of the Wadden Sea in the project "Systematic review for historical reconstruction of the Wadden Sea fish assemblage – Swimway historical reference" (SHIRE), funded by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV).

What did the fish community in the Wadden Sea look like in historic times? What were the drivers of change? These questions will be addressed in the project "Systematic review for historical reconstruction of the Wadden Sea fish assemblage – Swimway historical reference" (SHIRE), funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV), the Netherlands, conducted from January to July 2022.

In the Leeuwarden Declaration, the Wadden Sea Board (WSB) was instructed to further develop and contribute to implementing the SWIMWAY Vision (at Annex 3 of the Leeuwarden Declaration) as an integrated approach to achieving the Trilateral Fish Targets by investigating, monitoring, managing and communicating topics concerning the ecology of fish of the Wadden Sea Area.

The World Fish Migration Foundation partners with Wildlife Forever to promote aquatic conservation through art by collaborating on their State-Fish Art contest. As a part of the contest, the organisers created the international Fish Migration Award with Jeremy Wade as ambassador. Children ages 5-18 can submit their wonderful illustrations and the winners will be announced on World Fish Migration Day (May 16, 2020). This global competition is an opportunity for young children to connect to one another and show how their Love Flows for migratory fishes.

What are the drivers of fish populations that utilize coastal marine environments during their life cycle? What are potential bottlenecks? And do current management measures reduce those risks effectively? Those are among the central questions the first international Swimway conference focused on. On 24-26 September 2019 in Hamburg, Germany, about 90 scientists, managers, policymakers, NGOs and other stakeholders concerned with fish in coastal areas participated in the event and seized this as a forum to explore opportunities for cooperation and protection of migrating fish.

The Wadden Sea is home to a large number of fish species, but in recent decades populations have steeply declined. The shallow area provides shelter, food, spawning or living habitat in at least one of the life stages of these fish species. Similar to the crossroads function for birds (compare Wadden Sea Flyway Initiative), the Wadden Sea forms a junction along the life trajectories of fish. Yet, compared to birds in the Wadden Sea, fish are less well studied and received far less research attention.