So we trace the tuna trail back to its origins. It begins in the middle of the Indian Ocean, several hundred miles north of Mauritius in the notorious ‘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. Here we witnessed several transhipments from Asian longliners onto the Tuna Queen, a Panama-registered reefer ship operating for Japanese interests. The hauls disappearing into the Tuna Queen's frozen hold were impressive: some fish as large as the men who caught them, and their quantity staggering. The crews on these boats, recruited from some of the poorest nations in Asia and Africa, earn a pittance compared to their catch.
Patrolling across the Indian Ocean, we encountered several fish aggregating devices (FADs). Typically built from bamboo, these netted floating pallets provide shade underneath and attract a multitude of fish. Used primarily by French and Spanish purse seine vessels, they cast their large nets around schools of fish concentrated by the FADs and then proceed to scoop everything up on board, including juvenile fish and common bycatch species such as sharks, turtles and dolphins.
Fully laden, these boats steam back to port to offload at local canneries or onto reefer vessels such as the Antilla moored in Antsiranana, Madagascar. As payment to the dock workers doing the actual offloading, the purse seine vessels dump some of the bycatch and fish damaged during the scooping on the quayside. In effect, the locals receive some of the crumbs whilst the rich pickings remain firmly in the pockets of the foreign fleet owners.
To add insult to injury, Madagascar's lagoon fishermen, working from their small outrigger ‘Pirogues’, struggle as fish prices become depressed by a lively local market that springs up during the tuna season. Their meagre catch, usually not more than a basket for a day out on the water, provides little more than the bare minimum income.
In Mauritius, we encountered similar fates. The artisanal fishermen of Black River Bay working in their little boats lament declining catch rates and disappearing fish stocks. They squarely blame the large, industrial fishing fleets operating in their waters for the demise of tuna and other species. As the Mauritian government is more interested in quick cash from the sale of unlimited fishing licences to foreign fleets than in a future for its own coastal fishermen, these guys struggle for survival. Making their discontent known, the local fishermen staged a protest at the annual Indian Ocean Tuna Commission meeting. Needless to say, it seemed to fall on deaf ears and tired eyes of the bureaucrats attending within.
Given that the tuna industry is a global multi-billion dollar enterprise, with weak to non-existent instruments for regulation, it feels like we have only scratched the surface, and this story deserves more investigation. Monitoring the Indian Ocean fishery is almost impossible and the scope for abuse through legal loopholes and corruption correspondingly high. The transshipments we have seen on the high seas are not illegal and the quantity and origin of the catch remains largely undocumented. The majority of the boats operating there are owned and operated by faraway fishing nations such as Spain, France, Taiwan, Japan and others. It is them who reap the benefits from this highly profitable ‘free-for-all’ situation at the expense of the Indian Ocean fishery and the countries it is meant to serve.
