The prohibition in Bosnia applies only to the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of which Neum is a part, not to the other nine cantons in the Federation or in Bosnia’s other entity, the predominantly Serb-populated Republika Srpska.

Date mussels are not even listed as ‘protected’ or ‘strictly protected’ species at the Federation level.

In Bosnia, date mussels, of course, can only be harvested in Neum, but without laws prohibiting their trade elsewhere, restaurants across the country also freely display them on their menus. Effectively, responsibility for stamping out the trade falls solely on the shoulders of the Municipality of Neum.

“This is in essence Neum’s law, and their inspectorate is in charge of controls,” the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton told BIRN.

The municipality did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, in Sarajevo, one restaurateur said date mussels are particularly popular among his more affluent clientele.

“Once they’re banned, I’ll remove them from the menu,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

In Croatia, the prohibition applies nationwide, meaning anyone caught trading date mussels anywhere in Croatia can be fined.

Croatia’s Nature Protection Inspectorate told BIRN it conducts roughly 50 inspections of fish markets and restaurants across the country every year to eradicate the sale of date mussels and other ‘strictly protected’ species.

Such delicacies are not sold openly, but ‘under the counter’ at markets or by special order for ‘select guests’ in restaurants.

Since 2020, the Inspectorate said it had received eight reports of date mussels being served in restaurants in the capital, Zagreb, and the coastal region of Dalmatia. One restaurant owner in Zagreb was fined just over 1,000 euros, another just over 1,100 euros.

Smugglers will be punished, a Croatian border police officer told BIRN, whether caught with “a kilo of date mussels or a kilo of cocaine”.

In the absence of an entity-level or state-wide prohibition, Sarajevo lawyer and former prosecutor Jasmina Iftic said the Federation could, theoretically, apply legislation forbidding the destruction and pollution of the environment.

“If this involves harvesting over a wider area and if it would or could lead to a deterioration of biodiversity conditions and thereby endanger the quality of marine subsoil, then it could amount to a specific criminal offence of environmental pollution,” Iftic told BIRN.

Vuk Tesija contributed to reporting to this story from Osijek. 

This article was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.