Purse seiners, super seiners and their bigger brothers
Posted by Andrew via Email at 10:00 PM, August 15, 2004
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| (C) Greenpeace |
It's purse - same as a lady's purse - because of the bag like shape of the net. Seine because the net hangs vertically, with floats at the top and weights at the bottom. The ends are drawn around together to encircle the fish. By "super" we mean "really big" - basically anything with a helicopter deck - usually over 70 meters (230 feet) long. By "super super" we mean "really really big". The Cape of Good Hope, a locally flagged vessel docked next to us in Pohnpei, can carry 2,600 tons of fish in it's hold, is one of the biggest fishing vessel currently working in the Western Pacific, but it will still be out classed by the super super seiners we expect to soon see in the region.
Larger photo
Catching of the fish
The first step to purse seining is finding a school of fish - around here the target species is tuna (yellowfin or skipjack). Most of the purse seiners we saw in Pohnpei carry helicopters to help with this. The spotters in the helicopter look for flocks of birds, which gather to feed on the same little surface fish that the tuna eats. They also look for floating debris because it attracts the little feeder fish, which in turn attract the tuna. A heli pilot told me that they once caught 400 tons around a discarded refrigerator they found floating in the ocean.
To begin fishing, the purse seiner launches it's skiff - a smaller boat usually carried on the aft deck. Although the skiff is small, it has powerful engines to pull the net in a circle around the school. Once the two ends meet, closing the circle, only the very smallest of fish can get out through the holes of the net. The tuna is trapped - along with any unlucky non-target fish that happened to also be around for a feed.
Sometimes a whale will even get caught up in the net. Obviously bad news for the whale, but, as a crew member told me, it's also bad for the fishermen because the whale will crush the fish - so they need to get it out of the net. Usually, the way to do this is lower one section of the net a little. Then the whale can swim free, or the fishermen will tie a rope around its tail and pull it out with one of their boats. Sometimes if the captain of the purse seiner is impatient, they'll try to lift the whale out using a crane and rope (or cable) tied around its tail. Not good. I heard one gory story about a time when the whale was too heavy, and its tale broke right off.
When the catch hits the deck
The next step is to pull the net alongside and scoop the fish on board. Once onboard, the catch is sorted and the "garbage fish" (as the fishermen call them) are thrown away. What is a "garbage fish"? In this case, pretty much everything except tuna.
By now all the fish, wanted or unwanted, are dead so the fishermen quickly get their tuna iced down. There's a whole sub-industry focusing on various fish freezing technologies. Some ships use a briny slurry, others chip ice, others ice flakes. I was surprised to see just how many tons of salt one purse seiner had on hand to mix with the ice.
The fish is packed away in freezer compartments until it's time to unload, which brings us to "transhipping". We'll cover transhipping some other time.
What people are saying
The big problem most people have with purse seiners is that they are unselective. "They don't just take the big ones, they take the whole tribe," is the sentiment - because pretty much everything in the net is going to end up dead. And obviously, it's better to let the young ones reproduce, and grow into big older ones before you catch them.
But purse seiner fishermen tell me that tuna school by size. That is, younger, smaller, fish tend to swim together in one school, while older bigger ones tend to swim together in their own school. An experienced eye can tell whether a school is made up of big fish or small ones before catching them.
Naturally, the bigger the fish the more meat they'll have on them - so there's some financial incentive to fill your holds with larger (more valuable) fish. On the other hand, it's faster to fill the hold with anything you can find - leading some purse seine captains to be unscrupulous about what size they target. Plus, a lot of bycatch (small fish, unwanted species, etc.) is inevitable with purse seining - no matter how skilled or conscientious a fisherman you are.
The other big problem that a lot of people have with purse seiners, in particular the giant super seiners and the new super super seiners is simply the huge amount of fish they can catch. Some can take 11,000, or even 20,000, tons of fish out of the sea each year - and that's not including the bycatch. Plus, because these ships are expensive to run, they're forced to catch a lot just to cover their operating costs.
This is pretty hard to argue with, but it's also a matter of perspective. To purse seine owners and captains, catching huge amounts of fish with relatively low labour and operational costs per ton, is a good thing. But if you work on a different type of fishing vessel, and the super seiners are driving down the market value of the fish you catch, then you probably have a different view.
To the policy makers working for Pacific island governments, there's the additional issue of value per fish. They realize there are only so many fish in the sea, and they want the Pacific islands to get as much money as possible for each fish caught. The rough process of purse seining damages the fish - reducing their value per pound. Then again, the super seiners are catching for the canned tuna market, and it all looks the same in the can. Still, it's a waste of the high value species that do get caught.
What Greenpeace says about super seiners
Greenpeace's position is that the massive super seiners are inherently unsustainable and inequitable. It is better to catch a few valuable fish and protect our fishery than risk destroying the fishery by catching lots of poor value fish. Greenpeace argues that less destructive fishing practices that maximise the worth of the catch are preferable to purse seining.
Ships this size are so expensive to run, that the pressure is on to keep on fishing - regardless of whether there are enough fish to sustain the catch over the long term. If we allow vessels this big to continue vacuuming up our oceans, there will be no fish left for our children.
What's more, the profits from these massive vessels go to the few, not the many. How many Pacific island companies and individuals can afford to own and run vessels this big? Foreign companies might sometimes flag their vessels in the Pacific, or establish front companies here, but at the end of the day the profits go back to a few wealthy people in wealthy countries.
All that said, we've been lucky to find that many of the purse seine crew are friendly. It's been good hearing what they have to say, and I have a lot of respect for the hard work and sacrifices all fishermen make to catch fish for the rest of us. Many I've met are away from home and family for years at a time. They work long hours, suffer rough weather, cramped living, relatively low wages and sometimes dangerous work - all to put that can of tuna on your grocery shelf. Thinking of the people, the work, the oceans…maybe the real worth of that tuna is more than the price marked.
-- Andrew
