Last night we found a ship on the high seas on our radar. It was near the tail of the Grand Banks we discovered over the radio that it was a Portuguese vessel which was bottom trawling for redfish. We asked if it would be possible to visit them in the morning and maybe come aboard but they left us waiting for an answer saying that they needed to check with their company.
I did the 4am-8am watch last night and think I'm expected to do that for a while, though I'm already starting to feel the strain of this task having had no sleep since 3:40am. It's been an exciting day though so I don't mind feeling exhausted, at least not yet.
Fog surrounded us throughout the night but the weather was fine (where is that approaching storm everyone keeps talking about?). We followed the trawler on our radar, but remained several miles away. At about 5:30am one crew member from the fishing vessel contacted us on the radio and told us that we were only welcome on board if we had a NAFO (Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation) inspector with us.
Later that morning Bunny spoke to them and although we couldn't make it onto the vessel they agreed with us coming by for a closer look at their catch. This time, instead of helping to launch the African Queen I was actually in it! I had asked the campaigners and Mike the mate, if I could go several times already and after a meeting it was decided... I was the "extra" crew member on the Queen. I am very glad that I am now able to tell you, what happened when we went to visit our first bottom trawler in international waters even though my eyelids are currently being propped open with match sticks.
I sat on the back of the Queen and watched the Esperanza fade away into the fog. We cut through the surface of the water and sped across the glassy swells, which seemed a lot larger than from high above the ocean in the Espy. I've never been in a small boat this far from the coast so I was really surprised to notice just how enormous these watery hills were, which rose high above my head as they gently moved up and down. With fog encircling us like a white dome I couldn't tell which way was what but as if from nowhere, came the Santa Cristina, an enormous trawler, which looked like it had seen much better days.
It didn't take long before they began to haul the nets up from the deep. We watched carefully while remaining at about 20 meters from their stern. It happened just the way Mike told it yesterday after watching the other trawler but seeing the size of those steel doors for myself, which drag along the sea floor holding the net open shocked me into thinking about the untold damage that this gear must do on the fragile ecosystem below. They were catching redfish (often referred to as "rockfish") and although this fishery is said to be relatively "clean", involving little bycatch, I wonder how much destruction it leaves on the seabed, which is not apparent when the nets reach the surface.
As soon as the bright pink fish appeared so did all the greater shearwaters (seabirds), making the most out of this unfortunate event. Many small fish slipped out of the net and floated past the Queen right next to me, still moving around and seemingly still alive only not able to swim at all. I dread to think of what the pressure does to those fish when they are hauled up to the surface from over 600 meters. We caught some of these guys and put them in the boat with us. I couldn't help but look at them as they twitched and flapped about in the box, while the rest of the crew searched for bycatch coming off the trawler.
I didn't need to see any bycatch. I was already convinced that this method of fishing in the relatively unregulated high seas has to end NOW. I'm amazed how there can be this many redfish left after seeing how many they can catch in just a couple of hours. Later I learned that even smaller vessels have been seen catching up to 5 times as much fish! It's very sobering to witness just how far removed we must be from nature to be able to exploit it in such a grotesque way.
whazzat story about a NAFO inspector necessary for boarding a bottom trawler? We all know that many of those NAFO burocrats do not report about IUU fishing. Let's jump over the trawl-net when it is hauled and tell the captain that we oppose dragging and destroying those fragile ecosystems.
peace - francois
