Following publication of my Indian Ocean Tuna Trail story, it is very nice to see my esteemed colleague David O'Shea's piece on the tuna story being finally aired by Australia's SBS Dateline.
If you have 15 minutes to spare, it's well worth watching.
14 August 2013
6 August 2013
On the Tuna Trail
Having been in the Indian Ocean on a two-month Greenpeace expedition documenting the nature of Tuna fishing, this story is difficult to tell. Although we had a well-equipped ship, radar, satellite internet, inflatable boats, and even a helicopter at our disposal, monitoring fishing activities in the vast expanse of sea is like looking for a needle in a very large haystack.
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.
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.
13 May 2013
Small is Beautiful
Whilst covering
the artisanal fishermen in Mauritius
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
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.
1 May 2013
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...
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...
15 April 2013
In the Indian Ocean
For the past four weeks, I have been on board the Greenpeace ship Esperanza in the Indian Ocean. We left from Colombo and made our way to the northern tip of Madagascar, skirting the high risk piracy area extending east from Somalia on the lookout for fishing activities along the way.
Now in the Mozambique channel, I am assigned to document fishing practices here - mostly by purse seine vessels originating in France or Spain, but also the odd asian longliner. Whilst the weather is a dream with temperatures of around 30 degrees and plenty of sunshine, spotting schools of tuna or boats scooping them up has proved quite hard and time-consuming. Our daily search flights with the helicopter have turned into a repetitive daily routine; time in the inflatable boats has been rare: so far, we have examined a FAD and come close to a purse seiner hauling its catch.
One can only speculate about the reasons why this part of the Indian Ocean is fairly quiet for fishing: is it overfished and are fish stocks correspondingly low, or perhaps we've been looking in the wrong areas? Only time and more data analysis will tell, so for now I'll leave you with my first impressions from this trip below:
Now in the Mozambique channel, I am assigned to document fishing practices here - mostly by purse seine vessels originating in France or Spain, but also the odd asian longliner. Whilst the weather is a dream with temperatures of around 30 degrees and plenty of sunshine, spotting schools of tuna or boats scooping them up has proved quite hard and time-consuming. Our daily search flights with the helicopter have turned into a repetitive daily routine; time in the inflatable boats has been rare: so far, we have examined a FAD and come close to a purse seiner hauling its catch.
One can only speculate about the reasons why this part of the Indian Ocean is fairly quiet for fishing: is it overfished and are fish stocks correspondingly low, or perhaps we've been looking in the wrong areas? Only time and more data analysis will tell, so for now I'll leave you with my first impressions from this trip below:
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