Crossing lines: Tuna and Somalia
16/02/09 22:17 Filed in: Piracy | Fishing
Industry
Somali pirates seized at least three tuna fishing vessels last year; one of the vessels captured earned the bandits a ransom of more than $1 million, reported Reuters.
(Other factors have also likely contributed to the decline, including over-fishing and climate change.)
For environmentalists, this is a positive unintended consequence of the Somali piracy.
“In a perverse way, the pirates are definitely doing a good thing because maybe it will raise awareness about the benefits of leaving a fish alone for a while so that people see that it is possible for them to replenish,” Joni Lawrence, a marine conservationist, told the Eagle World News.
Highlighting the impact on the tuna industry also shines a light on some of the causes of piracy. The Somali bandits, some of whom are former fishermen, have been crying foul play against the illegal fishing that has occurred in their waters in recent years. They claim that European and Asian nations have taken advantage of the restive nation’s lack of a stable government, and trawl their waters for tuna, including the valuable yellow-fin tuna. This practice has stripped an already starving nation of one of its more lucrative livelihoods, reported the BBC.
Reuters reported that, according to Kenya’s Maritime Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, in 2006, hundreds of illegal fishing boats could be found in Somali waters; the majority were chasing tuna.
Still, what may have started as a vigilante, almost Sea Shepherd like, strategy to curtail illegal fishing by imposing a “tax” on foreign fishing vessels in Somali waters, has turned into a booming and nasty industry, as described by the BBC.
So is the Somali pirates’ now all too familiar justification of “we are just guarding our coast” a red herring or something to consider? We’ve been so distracted by the effects of a continuously troubled Somalia--not to mention the sizable and greedy ransoms the pirates have been earning--that we may be failing to address some of the root causes.
Today’s solution: Nations from around the world, including Japan, the world’s largest consumer of tuna, have sent their navies to help protect the fishing vessels, container ships and recreational vessels that pass through the Gulf of Aden.
An Associated Press story yesterday announced that the U.S. Navy is even using unmanned drones to spot the fishing vessels the pirates use to carry out their attacks.
But the AP story also reported that the number of attacks has not decreased, only the success rate.
So what about tomorrow’s solution? Until the capture of the Ukrainian vessel carrying $30+ million in arms, we largely ignored a problem that had been simmering for about a decade. We have yet to see an effective strategy to start tackling the deeper issues of how we got here in the first place, and to deter not just today’s pirates, but the next frustrated generation of Somalis.
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