Evenings on board a boat with limited internet call for a lot of reading . Which feels very refreshing and a nice break from being over connected . I recently finished ‘la dama del mare’/La dame de la mer by Anita Conti- a very adventurous researcher. The book is a true story from when, back in the early 1950s, she was aboard a french fishing vessel going to Alaska to fish cod . The book is a collection of her diaries over there , and has the capacity to transport you right on-board and gripping you: reading about her difficulties keeping the camera equipment clean and the way in which they ‘sent letter’ at home is the cherry on top of the cake making the book also highly entertaining. I am very thankful for my local librarian (Libreria Mare di Carta) who suggested it to me, don’t think I would have come across it online…. More than anything though, while reading it, I was struck by the sheer quantities of cod they caught day after day and the obsession and working at every hour of the day and night to get the quantity needed. And its not like it was the only boat doing this: there is also a detailed accounting of all other boats doing the same and the excitement of hearing them on the radio (the Italian, the spanish...) to find out where the banks were hiding (although you had to be good at distinguishing good information from lies told on purpose.. they were not stupid). Then we wonder why the cod stock collapsed in the early 90s ...
Of course, reading of all of these European boats going all the way over there to fish day in day out I couldn’t help but wonder about boundaries in the fishing and the rules for fishing in international waters : is it a free for all? And what about within the 12 miles area (national waters)? Fishing has undoubtedly been one of the major issues surrounding Brexit, for example, creating countless friction between the English and French (okay maybe just adding fuel to the fire of long long existing conflicts) as many fishermen voted for Brexit to ‘safeguard’ their own catches and then found themselves with a deal allowing others to fish in the 12 miles limit (although reducing the allowed quota, if I understood correctly). Well, after searching for the answer, it turns out that even in international waters there are some kinds of rules and it’s not really a ‘free for all’. These rules are decided ‘region by region’ by regional fisheries management organisations which comprise of many countries - usually the neighbouring regions to that specific area, which would make sense , plus the major regions fishing there - and this doesn’t make any sense to me as these would be some big stakeholders (thinking China, Japan…) which would vote for things to go in their favour (at least I imagine) - Is it just me thinking this is a major conflict of interest ? Further , I found out that some regions are not supervised by RFMOs, or are insufficiently supervised due to political situations. These include the Indian Ocean around the Horn of Africa: apparently, although the area is covered by the IOTC, fishing cannot be regulated due to piracy and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is common there...With all of the technologies that we have nowadays - this sounds all a bit crazy. This post didn’t want to be the final answer to the question but I wanted to raise some attention to a topic that just grabbed my attention from a political perspective (I always preferred inshore, small fisheries anyway..) and something that I will continue to inform myself upon - something else to think about when at the supermarket…
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