SThe females have been leaving their winter quarters in the Øresund between Denmark and Sweden since December and swarming south through the Baltic Sea. The herrings ready to spawn are early, their destination is the seagrass meadows and spawning herbs in the Bay of Greifswald, where they lay their eggs. The Bodden, 500 square kilometers in size, is the perfect nursery for the subspecies of the Atlantic herring: the shallow pool, shaped like a pan, offers Clupea harengus Protection from wind, waves and predators. The spring sun will do the rest. When the water warms up, the larvae hatch. Then the moment has come when a new cycle of life begins.
But the new life does not last long. As soon as they are born, the larvae starve to death. Although they can feed on the yolk sac for a short time, the chances of the little creatures surviving then drop rapidly. The hatchlings can no longer find anything to eat in the lagoon and soon starve to death. The grotesque natural spectacle has been repeated for years: Spring no longer allows life to flourish in the Bay of Greifswald, but instead leads to a mass extinction. As a result, the stock of western Baltic herring has fallen by a quarter in the past thirty years.