Towards the end of last year, according to information made available by the US Department of Defense, the new Coast Guard cutter, the USCGC Stone departed from Pascagoula, Mississippi, in order to conduct its first deployment to the South Atlantic. Its mission, so it was reported, was to counter illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing while strengthening relationships for maritime sovereignty and security throughout the region. This brand new cutter, it was said, is one of the US flagships which will be operating in conjunction with Southern Command, and will be “engaging partners” including Guyana, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Portugal. It will be in Guyana’s waters tomorrow.
Guyana had reactivated its shiprider agreement with the United States in September last year, but the focus of that seemed to be narcotics interdiction. While presumably that remains one of the objectives, clearly illegal and unregulated fishing has been moved up the list of priorities in this part of the world. What will certainly have Guyanese scratching their heads is the fact that the ship rider on the US Coast Guard’s new cutter will be an observer from the Portuguese navy, not even an official from a major continental player like Brazil.
So what is this all about, and why is Guyana involved? Perhaps one should put it in the context of Chinese industrial fishing practices in the Pacific Ocean, which came to international notice after the conservation group Oceana accused them of “pillaging” the waters off the Galapagos Islands, a Unesco World Heritage site, last August. According to Yale Environment 360, China might have anything between 200,000 to 800,000 fishing boats, and the number of vessels which hunt far from China’s waters could be 2,600, or in the view of research by the Overseas Development Institute, something like 17,000. In comparison, the comparable US figure for the latter category of ships is less than 300.
China, says Yale, is the world’s biggest seafood exporter, while its people consume a third of all fish worldwide. Its problem is that it has depleted its own fish stocks in its maritime waters, and is now scouring further and further abroad to exploit the fish resources of other countries, including West Africa and Latin America. The news site claimed, “Most Chinese distant-water ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as local boats from Senegal or Mexico might catch in a year.” It also reported that many of these ships are targeting “forage fish” which are ground into fishmeal, which is fed to aquaculture fish. In addition to the endangered totoaba fish, the Chinese also focus on shrimp.
Following the Galapagos scandal, what the Chilean navy said were 400 Chinese fishing vessels moved further down the coast, 11 of which were in Chile’s EEZ. According to the BBC, subsequently, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru issued a joint statement saying they would work together “to prevent, discourage and jointly confront” attempts at illegal fishing. While China was not mentioned, it was clearly the target of the release.
The US has another reason aside from the depletion of fish stocks for its interest in Chinese fishing fleets, and this is what it sees as China’s geopolitical objectives, particularly in the South China Sea. That will possibly not be a primary concern in the Atlantic just yet.
Which brings us to Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha. He has been in office a little over five months. He was appointed to the post on the basis of his political background in Freedom House, but has no administrative experience in a large (or even a modest-sized) bureaucracy that anyone knows about. Having arrived in a ministry which the PPP/C probably thinks will concern large sectors of the economy dominated by its own constituency, it may have placed less emphasis on competence than it did on loyalty and political commitment. (Which is not to say that his predecessor in the post distinguished himself at any level on any front.)
Perhaps it is that having landed in this position of governmental power, he just assumed (as many officials do) that the exercise of that power required him to take immediate decisions without reference to officials and stakeholders who have knowledge of the issue and without taking time to assess it from all sides. Assuming that one decision in particular was given his imprimatur, then he should by now have recognised that he has made a mistake.
The matter concerns the issuing of two seabob shrimp trawling licences by the Ministry last year which put the sustainability of our fish stocks at risk, and which may well cause us to lose our international certification for sustainable harvesting. There are two agreements which have been contravened by the issuing of these licenses: one with the Ministry itself whereby the current three licensed operators cut back their catches by 30% in order to ensure sustainability, and the other with the Marine Stewardship Council in order to obtain its certificate for sustainable fishing. This is turn guarantees the licensees’ market mostly in the US, and to a lesser degree in the EU. These markets would be at risk if certification is lost.
It is not as if currently there is a surplus of shrimp stocks. Two of the legitimate licensees told this newspaper that there had been a decline in the harvest in the last four years, Mr Gopie explaining: “We are harvesting exactly what is being reproduced. Should something go wrong … that could tip quickly …”
Minister Mustapha was suitably obscure in his response to the matter. He said an investigation had been launched into how these licences were issued, but after the passage of a month, he still cannot give an account of what the outcome was. Furthermore, following an episode of memory loss, he could not remember the names of the two new licensees when asked by Stabroek News, only saying they were “locals who are reputable fishermen.” This is nonsense, of course; sustainability will not be guaranteed because they are locals, or are reputable fishermen.
Which takes us again to the Chinese. The Stone will no doubt discourage shadow fishing fleets venturing into the Atlantic, and the Portuguese ship rider is on board possibly because fishing accounts for a significant segment of Portugal’s economy, and gives employment to a substantial number of artisanal fishermen. Her especial concern at this point could be about protecting her fishing interests in the Azores, if not Madeira.
All of that be what it may, it has to be said that Chinese fishing vessels don’t need to come into this part of the Atlantic if there are surrogates there already. And this newspaper has been given to understand that the new licences were given to a local company which is financed by a large Chinese company. In fact the whole sorry story came to light because one of the legitimate licensees was approached to process the catch of the new licence holder. The market for the latter will inevitably be China, and neither he nor his backer will be concerned about the loss of markets in the US and EU for existing licensees, or the loss of MSC certification. China imposes no such constraints. In the meantime, this country stands in jeopardy of having its shrimp stocks wiped out.
The Minister needs to remember the responsible approach to sustainable fishing adopted by the late Minister Sash Sawh under the previous PPP/C regime. He also needs to bear in mind the amounts of money invested by legal licensees to achieve sustainability – and it is not a modest sum. And most of all he needs to internalise the proposition that extinguishing our shrimp stocks in order to feed a voracious Asian nation is unacceptable.
This is a new year, and Mr Mustapha is due to meet the Guyana Association of Trawler Owners and Seafood Processors. The country waits to hear what he will tell them.
