NEW ACHIEVEMENT OF THE SPANISH FREEZER FLEET

Halibut stocks have now been depleted in Northwest Atlantic

Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization’s (NAFO) authorities have recently approved a recovery plan of halibut depleted stocks -a flat fish of great commercial value- in international waters off Terranova shores.

In those fishing-grounds, more than 30 Spanish freezer vessels that had previously taken part in the depletion of South African hake stocks in Namibia waters operate since 1991. Other 70 vessels operating in Namibia were redirected to Argentina, bringing about already known catastrophic results.

According to scientists’ assessments, annual catches must be reduced from 42,000 tons to 20,000 this year. The original feature of the recovery plan is that is foresees reducing catches even more during the next years, reaching 17,000 tons in 2007. The plan also predicts an increase as of that year and aims at reaching 25-35 thousand tons in 15 years.

The repetition of such a situation -Namibia, Argentina, NAFO- still fails to punish the persistent Spanish owners of freezer vessels. As usual, they adduce that cutting is excessive, that stocks “were not in such a bad status”, they demand subsidies in order to “accept” cutting, and resort to employment adducing that they will be damaged -some two thousand direct ones. In short, this is Argentina’s same old story.

Obviously, those ship owners state that “the development of experimental campaigns to look for new fishing-grounds could help solve the problem of the damaged fleet,” according to what Mr José Antonio Suárez-Llanos, deputy manager for the Vigo Vessel Owners Cooperative, has recently expressed.

The fact is that a 12 million euro investment -approximately the value of one of those vessels- needs to be recovered at all costs. The social ineffectiveness of these investments is evident in the creation of scarcely 60 jobs per vessel. However, add to this not only the cost transferred to worldwide communities due to fishing-grounds depletion caused by these disproportionate fishing machines, but also the subsidies the ship owners constantly claim and several times get, this business social irrationality becomes evident.

However, this is far from coming to an end.

After the world fishing exhibition held last month in Vigo, Spanish dockyards boast of having sold more than 50 industrial fishing vessels to African countries, especially Angola and Mozambique, which seek to develop an own fleet.

That’s the right thing to do, but Spanish vessels operating there at present will have to look for “new fishing grounds”. And unless they are found in Mars or in the Moon, that accomplishment is very hard to imagine.

In spite of the good intentions that the new European rules approved in December 2002 about fishing agreements have, we are fearful that these frightful fishing machines go on considering how to compete and ruin local fleets because of the already under exploitation fishing-grounds, which are the most commercially interesting.

It seems that the time has come for the performance of a more energetic global action in order to stop definitively this unsustainable wheel.

CeDePesca

04/10/2003