Hola,

I'm Freddy from Mar del Plata, Argentina, where pirate, illegal or unreported fishing is a common thing - as it is all throughout the last healthy fisheries in the world.

First time I went sailing in open seas it was on board a 25-meter fishing boat, February 1992. I became seasick one and a half minutes after leaving port. Took tons of Dramamine (seasickness medication) and slept a lot, some people here say I'm still under the effects of it.

On my first trip, the old fishermen were treating me as a baby, and saying things like "don't use that shit kid, keep eating beef and drinking plenty wine". After 5 or 6 days, a force 12 storm came, and I was watching them vomit for about three days, while I felt fine.

I keep a treasure in my mind - remembering the look of one of these guys having lunch in the small tables, standing up with his mouth still full, puking at the deck door one meter away, and sitting down again to continue eating.

The most common commercial species found in the oceans near my home are: several kinds of hake, a local kind of codfish, and squid. After the collapse of the fisheries around Spain and later South Africa in the 80's my home was the target of both foreign fishing companies operating legally, and also pirate fishing boats, operating inside our exclusive economic zone. Ten years ago the fish catches started to go down and down, this in an 800,000 people city where everybody is related in some way to fishing. This year, 2004, was the worst ever year in squid catches, the species most affected by Korean and Japanese pirate fishing boats.

I also worked onboard legal fishing boats back home, big and small ones, and a thing that shocks you is when you see the net coming on deck - a giant sausage 4 meters in diameter and 10 in length. This net sausage is filled with fish, but around 80% of them get thrown back into the water again, dead, because they have no commercial value - even though some of them are very tasty fish. We all, as consumers, have the duty of changing this by not buying fish that is captured in these ways.