When they reach for their wallets to pay for dinner this fall, Belgian diners will have some heavy lifting to do: Mussel prices are way up.
Two thirds of all Dutch mussels are eaten by Belgians, who like them in wine sauce with fries and mayonnaise. This year foam algae, which suffocate the larvae, and hungry sand piper birds have cut supplies to the lowest level in a decade.
Mussel traders expect to harvest less than 45,000 tonnes of the black bivalve mollusks, compared with over 100,000 tonnes in years of high production.
Prices at Europe's only mussel auction, in the Dutch town of Yerseke, have increased a third this year and tripled in the last three years to 444 guilders (US$180) for 100kg. All Dutch mussels pass through the auction, which has annual sales of between 120 million guilders and 150 million guilders.
"The quality of the mussels itself is very good, but prices are high, and that's not good," said Frank Wiskerke, born in a mussel restaurant and owner of one of the 10 mussel restaurants in Philippine, a Dutch town whose population triples with 4,000 mussel-loving visitors a day in summer season.
Producers are concerned that until supplies rise again, higher prices and lower stocks mean loss of market share to competitors abroad, said Arnoud Leerling, director of the Dutch Mussel Office in Yerseke. The Netherlands imported almost 20,000 tonnes of mussels a year in the last decade to make up its shortfall.
"We will lose part of our market and it will take years to get that back," Leerling said. "This year we will have only enough mussels for the Benelux market and our mussels are too expensive for other markets." The Netherlands vies with Italy for second place after Spain in producing the most mussels in the 15-nation EU. The EU produces around 500,000 tonnes of mussels a year, about two fifths of world production, according to the European Commission. China, Korea and New Zealand are the other large mussel producers.
Dutch mussels are special. At up to 6cm long, North Atlantic mytilus edulis mussels are larger than their Mediterranean cousins. While Dutch mussels have been grown on the seabed for well over 200 years, mussels from western France, western Spain, Italy and Greece are often grown hanging from ropes or in sea channels.
Six Dutch wholesalers dominate mussel processing, including Roem van Yerseke BV, Aquamossel BV and Delta Mossel BV. Market leader Prins & Dingemanse BV buys almost 30 percent of the mussels at Yerseke's auction.
"The lack of volume is compensated by higher price, but not by a higher profit," says Edwin Foudraine, the commercial director at Prins & Dingemanse.
In the cluster of seafood establishments at Brussels' long-defunct inland port, many restaurants are putting up their prices.
Bij den Boer has raised the price of a 1.2kg pot of mussels with fries to BF650 (US$14.73) from BF600.
"It's becoming a luxury product," said the restaurant's owner, Geert Heyvaert. "But most of the people who come here have mussels, even if they are 50 francs more expensive." Zaghdoudi Ali, manager of Aux Arcades restaurant in the city's seafood-lined Rue des Bouchers, says while he has not increased the price of a 1kg pot of mussels with fries from BF695, he has had to take mussels off the lunch menu.
In the Netherlands, naturally occurring "mussel seed" is dredged and sown in the shallow estuaries of Zeeland's Oosterschelde and Waddenzee where, once developed, the larvae attach themselves by threads to form carpets on the seabed, before being taken to nursery beds rich in vegetable plankton.
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