Small is Beautiful

Whilst covering the artisanal fishermen in Mauritius, the title of E.F. Schumacher's work on people-centred economics sprang to mind. For those of you not familiar with his seminal work, 'Small is Beautiful' critiques modern economic systems of mass production, where big organisations are stripping satisfaction out of work, degrading the worker to being no more than a cog in a large machine of the production line. As neither craft skill, nor the quality of human relationships is any longer important, the economic system becomes dehumanising, making decisions on the basis of profitability rather than human need.

Schumacher's core argument centres around a model of economic enterprise that put relationship, craft and environment at the heart of people's way of working. This, he argued, would enable environmental and human sustainability - a hallmark of radical 60s and early 70s political ideas.

In Mauritius, this idea can easily be seen in reality by visiting the artisanal fishermen working in their little boats up and down the coast. Small-scale fishing is one of the biblical professions that's been around since time immemorial, and is arguably the least harmful way of reaping benefits from the ocean. 

Sadly, the fishermens' story is all-too-familiar: catch rates and fish stocks are in decline, and they squarely blame the large, foreign industrial fishing fleets for their demise. As their government is more interested in quick cash from the sale of unlimited fishing licences to the purse seiner fleets than in a future for its own fishermen, these guys struggle for survival. Making their discontent known, the local fishermen escorted our ship with a small flotilla of boats to the IOTC meeting where they held a small protest. To the cynical, this may seem futile and naive, but if I try to put myself in their shoes, what else would I do?

It may seem romantically idealistic to be praising the virtues of small, but I feel these fishermen deserve our sympathy, support and a degree of protection from industrial fishing fleets.

Strictly Tuna Business

For the past two weeks, the Greenpeace ship Esperanza has been patrolling the Indian Ocean north of Mauritius. We ventured into an area known as the 'reefer triangle', a maritime no-man's land on the unregulated high seas where  fishing vessels rendezvous with reefer ships to offload their catch of Yellowfin Tuna.

We witnessed several transhipments from Taiwanese longliners onto the Tuna Queen, a Panama-registered reefer operating for Japanese interests. The hauls disappearing in the Tuna Queen's frozen hold were always impressive: some fish as large as the men who caught them, and their quantity staggering. The prices these fish will fetch at the world's tuna auctions will be in the tens of thousands each. Although the quantity of fish transferred that we managed to document are only a tiny fraction of what gets caught in the Indian Ocean, so one can only conclude that tuna is a multi-billion Dollar business. Regulation is weak, monitoring almost impossible and the scope for abuse of catch quotas correspondingly high. 

The crews of the longliners doing the fishing, however, receive only a pittance in comparison to what their catch brings in. Mostly of Indonesian, Cambodian or Vietnamese origin, these men are out at sea for at least a year before they see home again. Branding those who struggle to make ends meet as criminals seems harsh - recognising that there is a problem of overfishing and dwindling stocks however, is not.

In comparison with these fishermen, I feel lucky: after six weeks at sea, we are arriving in Mauritius, and I have three more weeks on this assignment in the Indian Ocean. More to come...