Landlocked Switzerland supports a small commercial fishing industry in its many large lakes. About 200 fishermen nationally ply them in small boats, supplemented by fish farmers who largely raise trout and some carp. The former catch primarily perch and whitefish, with pike, lake trout and Arctic char making up significant portions of the country's annual catch. Angling is also popular, while fish processing is marginal, largely limited to making fish oil for the country's drug industry.
While some of the Swiss catch is exported, mostly to neighboring countries, the country runs a large trade deficit in fish and fish products, with imports serving most of the market, largely in the food sector, as tastes have shifted towards seafood. Within Switzerland, the French-speaking population consumes 60 percent of the fish, three times its share of the population.
Switzerland's largest lake, Lake Geneva, shared with France, is also its most productive fishery, providing a fifth of the total catch, including almost half its perch. Lake Zurich, fifth largest by area, is the second most productive Swiss fishery, with the largest share of the country's whitefish catch. Lake Neuchâtel produces the largest portion of lake trout, and small Lake Sempach is fourth in whitefish. The smallest Swiss lake that supports a commercial fishery is Lake Hallwil.
Fish have been an important part of the Swiss diet since at least the Middle Ages; by the late 17th century catches in Lake Geneva were being strictly regulated. Today the cantons are the primary fishing regulators, with federal law setting the guiding principles; the large lakes that Switzerland shares with its neighboring countries are managed by international commissions. The total number of fishermen has declined in the late 20th and early 21st centuries along with catches, a phenomenon the fishermen attribute to the country's success in reducing pollution in its lakes, to the point that aquaculture now accounts for the majority of the industry's output.
History
Prehistory–Roman era: Archaeological evidence
Paleolithic archaeological sites in Switzerland have yielded extensive evidence of fishing in the lakes. Those associated with Cortaillod culture have well-documented fishing nets and traps, along with other tools such as harpoons and skewers. Fishermen of that era, it is believed, primarily used the seine fishing, stretching nets between a boat and a stake planted in the lake bottom in shallow waters and between two boats in deep water, sometimes supplemented by gill nets or longlines.
Evidence from the Roman era supports the existence of a trade in fish products. Sealed amphorae found at Aventicum contained garum, a popular condiment of the times made from spices and marine fish, and allec, a paste used as a precursor. By the Middle Ages, the Swiss had also begun importing herring, dried sole and other stockfish caught in the Baltic Sea from those cities in what is now Germany.
Middle Ages: Feudal regulation
Fish were commercially important at least around Lake Geneva by the middle of the 12th century. A declaration of tribute made to the Priory of St. Jean de Genéve in 1150 includes wine, cheese, and several large fish. The species named include trout, pike and omble chevalier, known in English as the Arctic char. It is the earliest mention of the latter species' presence in Lake Geneva.
There was enough fishing on Lake Geneva in the early Middle Ages to require regulation. In 1312 France's King Philip IV decreed that all nets used to take fish on the lake had to have a minimum mesh size of 25.5 mm (1 inch), the width of a silver tornesel coin. There was also a size minimum for caught fish. The fish on Nyon's coat of arms dates to this time as well; the blue and red background represents its passage from the cold lake water to the hot kitchen. Regulation of fishing on Lake Constance similarly dates to the mid-14th century.
Commercial capture and consumption of fish from other lakes and rivers in what is now Switzerland also dates to medieval times. Records dating from the 15th century record an annual take from Lake Sempach averaging around 180,000 whitefish. Archaeological digs in the northern and eastern regions of the country have found evidence of consumption, and long distance trade with other inland-fishery regions of Central Europe, that corroborates the documentary record of the period. Larger fish were caught by professional fishermen and eaten by nobility, landed gentry and the higher-ranking clergy, while smaller fish were caught and consumed across the social spectrum, primarily by those who ate them.
Under Roman law, fishing rights in rivers and lakes were royal property; most sovereigns delegated those rights to monasteries or local vassals, who in turn allocated them to local fishermen as they saw fit. The open water in the middle of the lakes was common fishing ground; the shallows near the shore were reserved for the local landowner. By the late medieval period, cities had also gained control over fishing rights in waters beyond their immediate vicinity in order to keep them clear for navigation.
By the early 14th century, fishermen were part of the guilds of various professions—boatmen, mostly, but also bakers, butchers, coopers and weavers—in different cities. In collaboration with the authorities, they negotiated detailed fishing regulations, covering when certain fish could be caught, minimum sizes, maximum quantities, and what equipment could be used to catch them, all with the goal of preventing overfishing.
In 1690, fears of overfishing again led to new regulations on Lake Geneva. Authorities on all jurisdictions in the lakes basin limited the use of fyke nets to the days between March 15 and June 15 annually, to allow certain species to replenish themselves. A minimum size for net mesh was also imposed.
Once fishermen had accumulated a catch worth taking to market, the rules required they first sell them in the city they worked from, in order to ensure a steady and affordable supply of fish for public consumption. An inspector saw to the freshness of fish and that no species were offered for sale that had been taken out of season; fishermen were also required to report any others they saw violating those rules. They were not permitted to sell to a reseller, but they could hire someone to handle the task of selling the fish. Women were excluded from the trade—by law in Bern, Biel and Lausanne, by custom elsewhere.
19th century: Federal and cantonal regulation Fishing regulations were enforced by the clergy and nobility through their exclusive control of fishing rights, a system that had spread to other Swiss lakes from Lake Geneva until 1798, when their rights were abrogated as "feudal" in the wake of the French Revolution, leaving fisheries unregulated. Several years of overfishing followed, leading to fishermen agreeing to limits again in 1803 after the Act of Mediation. The 17 cantons in which Switzerland's commercially fished lakes lie used powers delegated to them under the 1815 Federal Treaty to begin regulating fishing. As Switzerland began organizing itself into a modern federal state in the middle of the 19th century, the cantons further reasserted control over the lakes.
The canton of Zürich was one of the first to go beyond the use of regulations to keep fisheries sustainable when it established Switzerland's first fish hatchery at Meilen in 1854. It used a new French technique to artificially inseminate fish eggs. After being hatched in closed facilities, the fry were released into rivers, streams and lakes so that they could be caught. By 1880 there were 24 more hatcheries in the country.
After nearly a quarter-century of negotiations, the cantons of Vaud, Fribourg and Neuchâtel reached an agreement on managing Lake Neuchâtel in 1869; it came into force two years later. All three surrendered control over their portion of the lake in order to establish a consistent regime on its entirety. It has been updated ten times since then.
In 1875 the federal government eventually passed the first Federal Fisheries Law, (FFL) which establishes broad principles of fisheries management. It delegated as much fisheries regulation as possible to the cantons, who usually assigned their police or revenue departments with enforcement and only appointing special fisheries agents during spawning season. Those cantons whose lakes were shared with neighboring countries with working with those countries to jointly regulate the lake fisheries. By the early 1880s Switzerland had reached agreements with France, Italy, Baden and Alsace-Lorraine (the latter two now part of Germany and France respectively).
By this time fishing professionally, previously done on the side by farmers, vintners and other tradesmen, had evolved into a full-time job for more of those who took to the lakes. To protect their interests, primarily the maintenance of a healthy and sustainable fishery, some of these fishermen joined with scientists and sympathetic politicians to form the Swiss Fisheries Association (SFA). Its goals were twofold: to promote measures to protect the fisheries, especially as industrialization spread and hydroelectric plants were built to power new factories and facilities, and to promote research into the fisheries.
Efforts to conserve and protect species began shortly afterwards as well. Fish ladders were built in streams at several locations to facilitate a return to spawning grounds. A report was also prepared on water pollution in the Basel industrial district and its effect on the local fish population. By 1880 the value of the annual catch was estimated at . The first of three revisions to the Federal Fisheries Law was made in 1888, taking account of water pollution and setting a framework for cantonal law. In 1893, the German states of Baden, Württemberg (now merged) and Bavaria signed the Bregenz Agreement with Switzerland and Austria, the first regulatory framework covering the entire lake.
In 1887 the rainbow trout was introduced to Lake Geneva and other Swiss waters from its native North America at a time when the true féra, long one of the most popular and abundant fish in Lake Geneva, was being fished to extinction. It has remained popular with diners but not with fishermen since it tends to eat the eggs of native species. Another North American transplant, catfish, was introduced at the end of the century by a Geneva city councilor who had found it delicious on a trip to Canada. It has thrived despite being another species fishermen resent because it eats primarily the eggs and fry of other species. The experience led later to laws regulating the introduction of nonnative fish species.
20th century: Environmental challenges
In the 20th century the amount of full-time professional fishermen continued to grow. Political pressure from those fishermen on Lake Geneva, particularly from Vaud, led the federal government to withdraw in 1911 from the 1880 agreement with France, seven years after it had been renewed and updated, on the grounds that French fishermen on the lake were not respecting its terms. Two years later Vaud joined with the neighboring cantons of Geneva and Valais to regulate fishing in the Swiss portion of the lake, under the same general terms as the 1904 agreement with France.
France and Switzerland tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a new agreement in 1924, the same year professional fishermen formed the Swiss Professional Fishermen's Association. Fears that this growth could lead to overfishing were met with restrictions on newer, stronger nets used for bottom fishing and, in the middle of the century, a cap on the number of licenses issued by the cantons, in favor of full-time fishermen with the best training and equipment.