A chance encounter
Posted by Andrew via Email at 10:40 PM, July 17, 2004
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| (C) Greenpeace |
This afternoon Derek (captain) spotted a ship on the radar. From its behaviour, he guessed that it was fishing, and scrambled the boat team. Within minutes we were away. Myself, Lagi (campaigner), our photo and video people, Francisco as boat crew, and Phil (boat mechanic) driving. We made decent time across fairly calm ocean.
We wanted a look at the fishing boat mostly just because we are documenting, and learning about, what goes on in the Pacific fishery so an opportunity to observe a boat working out to sea is a good one. Also we wanted to make sure it was a legitimate fishing vessel because pirate fishing is a major problem in this part of the world, and something we want to help local governments crack down on.
The fishing boat soon came into view, and Lagi recognized it as a Fijian vessel licensed to catch tuna. The crew was friendly, waving back to us, but also busy pulling up their long line. Long line fishing is when a strong line is run out from the boat with other fishing lines coming off of it every few meters. This main line can be tens of kilometres long suspended at a particular depth by buoys, depending on the species they're targeting.
They mostly pulled up nice big albacore tuna, but also a skipjack tuna, a ray or skate, a mahi mahi and a shark. A big blue shark, almost three meters long, with a lot of fight left in it. Now, the proper thing to do with this shark would be to cut the line and release it. If they'd done that than there's a good chance it would have lived. So I winced a little when I saw them kill it. The fins were chopped off, and hung up to dry. The rest of the shark was pushed back in the water.
Besides being very wasteful, this is unfortunately a very common thing to do with sharks. The fins are worth a lot of money, but the rest of the shark does not sell for much. Often even on legitimate boats crewmembers are paid very little, but allowed to keep the shark fins, which can be worth more than the crew is actually paid. Knowing this, it is common for officials to overlook a few shark fins when these boats come to port. But the question is, what is "a few"?
In the end, we only saw one shark caught today (in about half an hour of watching). Imagine though, thousands of boats are out there fishing for weeks or months at sea per trip, and potentially doing the same thing on a smaller or larger scale. Without controlling, or requiring reporting, of these shark catches it is hard to say when too many are being taken.
Today, most of the fish they were pulling in were tuna. So overall, it was good to see a licensed boat with a mostly local crew fishing in Fijian waters, but it was also a reminder of the complexities involved in finding real solutions to fisheries issues.
