The old man and the river
Text by REINER BURGER,
photos by INSA HAGEMANN and STEFAN FINGER
November 5th, 2021 Rudi Hell is one of the last Rhine fishermen in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Scientists can also learn a lot from his experiences.
At Grieth, just before the border with the Netherlands, the Rhine is already pushing towards the sea.
The clouds hang low over the country on this day.
Rudi Hell steers his motorboat in a large, elegant arc between two cargo ships across the wide river.
Marc Dickert, a young biologist who has just completed his master's degree at the University of Cologne, jumps on board on the opposite bank.
He works at the Grietherbusch research station.
In the morning and at noon he and Andreas Eyhorn from the Rudi Hell fishing association lend a hand on his two eel chokes.
A curt greeting, then Hell lets the outboard howl again.
Moments later the boat reaches the "Anita II" on the left bank of the Rhine.
Hell, a tall man with a white sailor's beard and a sailor's cap, only needs a long step and he's already standing in his bulky rubber boots on the deck of the Aalschokker, which is anchored a good ten meters from the bank in the open Rhine.
Hell hasn't changed since we first met in 2015.
He's more agile than many in their mid-50s.
He will soon be 85.
The Aalschokker "Anita II" is ten meters from the shore in the open Rhine.
Rudi Hell unties the dinghy "Erpel".
Andreas Eyhorn from the fishing association helps Hell with his work.
"If you're a Rhine fisherman, you don't need a fitness bunker."
RUDI HELL
Rudi Hell is one of the last Rhine fishermen in North Rhine-Westphalia.
For around 300 years, Hell's ancestors lived from fishing in Grieth on the Lower Rhine.
A family crest hanging in his house testifies to it.
For as long as he can remember, Hell has been on the river.
Grandfather Theodor showed him how to catch salmon or salmon and how to set eel traps.
Back then, in the spring, the bank water was black, so many allis shad cavorted on their way up the Rhine from the sea.
The traders roamed the villages with fully loaded horse-drawn wagons.
"A bucket of allis shad cost 50 pfennigs.
You ate allis shad for lunch, you ate allis shad in the evening.
And so that you could have allis shad all year round, the women boiled it in jars.”
Rudi Hell learned from his grandfather how to catch salmon and set eel traps.
The last notable allis shad catch is said to have taken place near Wesel in 1949.
Then the migratory fish disappeared - because of the many impassable barrages and because of the ever worsening water pollution.
The more brilliantly Germany developed in the economic miracle, the murkier the Rhine became.
In St. Goar, master fisherman Severin Nagelschmidt pulled eels from the Rhine for the first time during the 1960 fishing season, which "were so spoiled that his customers gave them back," wrote the FAZ in the summer of 1972. "The attempt was successful, the animals with a three-week cure in tanks with spring water to make it palatable again.” White fish, however, could not be regenerated.
“A few days ago Nagelschmidt fished two trout.
When he cut them open, they stank so badly that even the dog turned away.”
Rudi Hell remembers the bad smell of phenol well.
The Rhine, whose entire catchment area is characterized by strong industrialization, dense settlement and intensive agriculture, was one of the dirtiest rivers in the world at the time.
With the "Rhine Action Program" it was possible over the past decades to improve the water quality to such an extent that today the river is only considered to be "moderately polluted" and is at least as clean as in the pre-war years.
Many species of fish that have since disappeared, such as salmon, have returned.
"The zander population has also developed well," says Hell.
Checking and repairing the equipment is also part of being a fisherman.
A very special moment for the Rhine fisherman: when in 2010, in cooperation with the Grietherbusch research station, he was able to detect allis shad in the Rhine for the first time in decades.
The international resettlement project that had started two years earlier had therefore been a success.
However, to date, the population has not been able to reproduce itself.
Hundreds of thousands of allis shad larvae have to be released again and again.
Rudi Hell's father was no longer able to make a living from fishing.
Nevertheless, the son was drawn to the Rhine.
For a while, Hell sailed as a bargeman from Rotterdam up to Strasbourg and back again.
"Of course it was nothing with a family." So he worked as a master dredger in a nearby gravel pit - which also had the advantage that he could at least be a Rhine fisherman again in his free time.
"It's in the blood to be a fisherman." Hell has been a full-time fisherman since he retired 19 years ago.
Named after his deceased wife, "Anita II" is his second Aalschokker.
In 2010, Hell bought the cutter, which was built in Holland in 1934, from the Nagelschmidt family in St. Goar.
"One knows each other among Rhine fishermen."
Fishing is not just a passion for Rudi Hell.
For many years he has also been fishing for science, for universities and institutes - including in Trier, Essen and Cologne.
It's about stocktaking of allis shad, juvenile salmon, river and sea lamprey and eel, perhaps the world's most mysterious fish, which Hell finds more fascinating than any other.
The animals are called “glass eels” when they come from the western Atlantic, and they swim up rivers as “climbing eels”.
Always exactly where their parents once lived, whether in the Moselle, Neckar, Elbe or Rhine, they grow in the years that follow, eating up their fat reserves for the many thousands of kilometers long journey back to the Sargasso Sea in the subtropical western Atlantic, on which they then eat nothing.
This is where the animals, now known as “blank eels”, spawn.
Today he mainly fishes in the service of research.
Together with the biologist Marc Dickert, the fisherman keeps a meticulous record of the catch of the day.
Every evening, Hell spans his 34 meter long net between two booms of the "Anita II" like a giant shopping bag.
To get the catch, all he has to do is close it.
To do this, Hell starts a comfortably chugging diesel engine that drives a cable winch.
After a while, the lower tree appears from the depths of the Rhine and touches the upper one.
The water rushes.
Marc Dickert climbs into the dinghy "Erpel" and lets himself be carried a few meters down the Rhine.
He pulls the trap on board.
Seagulls circle him screeching, hoping for bycatch.
A few zander were caught today, as well as Bresen, nases, gudgeons, but no eels.
"It was just a full moon, so they don't like to be out and about," Hell grumbles.
Eyhorn measures each fish individually.
Dickert keeps records.
Hell writes down the measurements in his own large notebook.
Rudi Hell prepares the net for the next catch.
As a biologist, you learn a lot from such an experienced fisherman, says Dickert.
"And such an Aalschokker makes excellent migratory fish monitoring possible." Because with the spread-net fishing technique, the fish fauna can be filtered out to a certain extent from a wide strip of the Rhine.
The amount of biomass can be determined based on the flow rate and the size of the network.
This works even more precisely if you constantly keep an eye on both sides of a stream.
That's why Hell bought another Schokker in 2019 - also from the Nagelschmidt family.
"Heinz" is located upstream in Rees on the right bank of the Rhine.
When the renovation work below deck is complete, Hell wants to rename the cutter "Weina".
It's the first name of the new woman in his life.
Weina is 61 and lives in North China.
Hell pulls his smartphone out of his pocket and gently wipes over a dozen pictures: Weina with her siblings in her home country, Weina with her grandchildren on the Lower Rhine, Weina on the promenade in Grieth.
"Don't you agree, she looks 45?" The Rhine and the Chinese mitten crab brought the two together.
Weina, of whom Rudi Hell shows pictures on his cell phone, is the new woman in his life.
They have been wanting to get married for two years, but Corona and the consequences intervened.
Some time ago, a Chinese landlord who ran a restaurant on the Lower Rhine came to Rudi Hell.
He asked if the fisherman could also catch mitten crabs.
That wasn't a problem for Fischer Hell, there are plenty of mitten crabs in the Rhine.
Nobody knows exactly when the animal came to Germany.
At the beginning of the 20th century, merchant ships presumably brought the crab in their ballast water from China to European ports as larvae.
It was not until 1912 that scientists documented the existence of the exotic crawling animal in Germany.
At first, people marveled at the immigrants, who were up to 30 centimeters wide, including their long legs.
Characteristic of the animals are their woolly hairy claws, which some call "gloves" (hence the German name).
But because the mitten crab had no natural enemies in its new environment, it spread extremely quickly.
"It's a plague," complains Rudi Hell.
Although the omnivores mainly feed on dead biomass, if they get into creels, the fish caught in them are easy prey for them.
"It's a plague," Rudi hell grumbles about the mitten crabs in the Rhine.
In the 1930s, attempts were also made on the Elbe to get rid of the crawling animals with large-scale control campaigns.
Farmers transported cartloads of hand-picked crabs to their pigsties or chicken yards.
But all efforts were in vain.
The advance of shellfish only came to a halt when the industry dumped more and more dirt into the rivers.
As soon as the water became cleaner again, an uncanny crab boom began.
From the point of view of environmentalists, it would be best if the animals were discovered as a delicacy, as in East Asia: the gourmet as the regulating enemy.
"She's really good," says Hell.
"Almost like lobster.
The females are best when they have a lot of eggs.” During a meal of mitten crabs, the Chinese landlord Rudi Hell introduced Weina to his mother.
"It sparked right away."
When work is done, Rudi Hell has Rhine eel soup once a week at home.
According to our own recipe and of course cooked by ourselves.
He longs for Weina.
"We've been getting married for two years now." At first the German authorities weren't satisfied.
Because not everything was documented in writing from birth in China, Weina's papers are incomplete.
"So we had planned to get married in China, it would be done there in two hours." But then Corona came.
"I'm not going to get on the plane to be in quarantine for 28 days.
The whole holiday is gone right away.” Weina was last on the Lower Rhine at Christmas.
"A long time," Hell sighs as he climbs into the "Erpel" dinghy.
After four or five strong grips on the rope we are back on the bank.
"Careful, the basalt rocks are slippery, it's best to take a big step." Rudi Hell is already standing on top of the embankment and smiles mildly.
"If you're a Rhine fisherman, you don't need a fitness bunker."
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