Busy enough out here
Posted by Andrew via Email at 03:00 PM, August 20, 2004
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| (C) Greenpeace |
In the past two days we've meandered along an 80-mile (129km) stretch of ocean. Along our way, we've seen eight purse seiners like our friend pictured here with the tree (which I'll explain in a sec). These can take maybe 5,000 tonnes of tuna per year (maybe more). So, as a rough guesstimate, in this small amount of time, in a small area, we've seen fishing boats with the capacity to take 40,000 tonnes of tuna out of the ocean every year (not counting discarded bycatch). The newer purse seiners that are now starting to work in this region easily have twice that capacity.
Larger photo
Now about the tree - they aren't something you see a lot of on ships. My first guess was that it's for curing seasickness. Because, as any salty sailor will tell you, the best cure for seasickness is to "go stand under a tree".
However, some of my fellow crew doubted this theory so we took our boat over to investigate. It turned out to be a Japanese ship, and the bamboo tree is actually for good luck. Well, you learn something new every day.
We also learned that this ship operates out of Japan. It comes down here, does it's fishing in this smallish area of international water in between island nations - where it doesn't have to pay licensing fees. Then it heads straight back to Japan, almost 2,000 miles (3,220km). The almost entirely Japanese crew never docks anywhere else along the way unless there's a problem.
For now, that's all perfectly legal. But their fishing is essentially unregulated, and the local island nations don't see a cent of the profit - despite the catch coming from the same tuna stocks that migrate through their waters. But the days of unregulated high seas fishing in this part of the world look numbered. At the recent Tuna Commission meeting in Samoa, even Japan's head delegate, Masatoshi Abe, reportedly acknowledged, "The time is over when we could catch as much fish as we want, and we have to think the same principle of conservation regarding tuna."
The only question is, will change come fast enough to save the fish stocks relied on by islanders and ecosystems alike.
-- Andrew
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