Undercurrents

Posted by jessmil on 05/09/2008 3:04 pm

Today we caught an illegal tuna purse seiner (Queen Evelyn 168) in the Pacific Commons between Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia. This Philippines-flagged vessel was close to the transfer of tuna between her sister vessel and a refrigerated mothership. It is likely that a transfer of fish at sea involving an illegal vessel was about to occur, but upon our arrival the vessels immediately separated and fled.

Transfers of fish at sea are known to facilitate pirate fishing around the world and now we have seen it with our own eyes in the Pacific. For years tuna have disappeared unreported on motherships like this.

One of our volunteer activists from Fiji boarded the mothership and has written about her experience.

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My name is Ana and I am a Fijian volunteer. I am the assistant cook on board the Esperanza . Today, I was an activist for the second time since I have been on the ship. Early this morning at about 5.30am I was woken up by a phone call from the bridge, telling me that they had spotted a fishing boat and that I must get ready because the boat was launching at 6.00am. Little did I know that the real action would not start until about 11.00am, so back to the galley I went to help prepare lunch. That's just the way it goes sometimes. The helicopter came back and we began to chase a reefer (a vessel that takes the tuna catch away from fishing vessels so they can keep catching more fish without coming to port) out here in international waters.

I was on standby from 5.30am but it wasn't until 11.00am that we we finally got close to the reefer. Being on standby for that long really starts to get to you, The tension and the adrenaline really puts you on the line.

Boats were launched and we took off towards the reefer, radio contact was done already and Lagi our campaign leader came with us. When we arrived at the reefer some of our crew were welcomed on board. The captain and crew were very helpful and even our photographers were allowed on the reefer, which was really nice of the captain. I stayed in the inflatable for a while and bobbed alongside the ship for about 2 hours and then finally the radio contact was made asking me, my wantok Danny (from Papua New Guinea) and Sakyo (a Japanese activist) to also board the ship.

We managed to get on the boat without any mishap and I am still surprised that I actually climbed up that ladder because I am afraid of heights. But with the encouragement from my fellow crew on board the African Queen I managed to climbed up that ladder with shaky knees! Thank you Helena for your patience and encouragement from the rest of the team. We were invited to go down to the cooler which was half full with tuna of various sizes. We climbed down the ladder to document the cargo of tuna in there.

Being in the cooler, I got a close look at all the fish and it made me really sad because the smallest tuna that I could see was the size of my palm. No wonder there is a decline in the tuna stock because these foreigners took whatever size of tuna that they could get their hands on. I was filled with rage when I came out of the cooler I had to sit down for a while to get my emotions back together. In order for the Pacific to have tuna stocks for our children tomorrow we need to act now.