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Namibia
and Argentina 13
years ago, when Namibia recovered its independence and freed from the racial
South African neo-colonialist domain, it found out that its Exclusive Economic
Zone was in fact “inclusive” of hundreds of large freezer trawlers, Spanish
mainly, and that, as a result of this presence, South African hake stocks (Merluccius
paradoxus and Merluccius capensis) had almost been depleted. At
that moment, it was estimated –when it comes to fishing, Spanish data are
always hard to specify- that catches had exceeded half a million tons. Once the
regrettable state of the stock had been analysed, an annual total allowable
catch of 40,000 tons was established. Moreover,
two regimes were established: one of non
transferable fishing quotas per vessel, and another one of incentives which,
starting from very high extraction fees, gradually reduced them as the licensee
company owned a higher percentage of Namibian people, a higher percentage of
Namibian workers, and a higher proportion of raw materials elaborated on shore. It
is worth mentioning that the control, granted to one third party in the
beginning, was gradually nationalized, fulfilling a more than effective task. In
this way, almost from nothingness, the resource started to be recovered, and the
present 220,000 tons of annual catch were reached, 70 percent of which are
landed by ice chilling fishing vessels especially in Walbis Bay port, where
about 15,000 jobs were created. It
is paradoxical that the same companies that seem irreducibly “pro-freezer (factory
trawler)” in Argentina, have adapted over there and operate ice chilling
fishing fleets mainly. Our chief hake competitors represent an interesting mirror, useful for us to look at ourselves.
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