Doryman

The Small Scale Sustainable Fisheries Conference

Bangkok, Thailand 13-17 October 2008

 

Layover, Tokyo, Japan 11-10-08

It all happened at the last minute but I am on my way to the Small Scale Sustainable Fisheries Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, and will be posting from there over the next week.

 

Suvarnabhumi Airport, 9:00 PM

 

 

 

Bangkok sunrise from my hotel.

 

12 October, Bangkok, What a day at the Civil Society preparatory workshop for the 4SSF.

I missed the first day but the scene is familiar, all the crew is here, John Kurien, Pisit Charnsnoh, Nalini Nayak, Chandrika Sharma, Arthur Bull from Nova Scotia.

 

Who’s that guy who pushes the rock up the hill and watches it roll down again?

Sisyphus!

Somebody asked him, why do you keep doin’ it?

He said, Well, somebody’s gotta do it.

 

So here we all are, desperate to get the rock up the hill, realizing the importance of doing it now.

 

Another analogy: Riding the subway up to the conference last night I saw a young man playing with a Rubit’s cube, a plastic toy puzzle where one must create one single multi-colored cube with all six sides a solid color by manipulating 64 smaller multicolored cubes around variable axi. He sat on the train engrossed, his long fingers manipulating the cubes with amazing speed, but it was a maddening exercise, he would get four sides all the same color, but the remaining two don’t match and he’d have to start all over.

Then I spent the day listening to all the presentations and discussions and I could see the similarity between solving the Rubit’s cube, and what we are trying to do. For certain we have all the pieces, and we are struggling to get them in the right order, and while we can get the realities and policies and ideals to match up on one or two sides, there are always the others that are out of whack, and trying to get them right will throw those we have in order into chaos again, not to mention that our puzzle has infinitely more complexities than the little plastic toy.

 

First came the litany of problems with which we are all too familiar. But delivered in multiple languages, the destruction of habitat, tourism, development, aquaculture, industrial fishing, arrest and imprisonment of fishers, working too close to or across international boundaries.

 

And worse, a sudden upsurge in academics and policy makers championing ITQ’s

Quato management that will privatize the resources and consolidate and wipe out small fishing communities. The atrocities all well documented. And MPA that impact small fishers, I wrtoe about all this and more in “The Doryman’s Reflection.” And “Swimming in Circles.” But there are new twists and new approaches to solutions, an understanding that our messge must be unified, it must be tight, and powerful.

 

Moving toward that, well it’s a bit like the Rubit’z cube: In some cases prices should be higher, in some cases lower. While many agree that we should focus on establishing strong local markets as opposed to trying to capitalize on existign export markets, the export markets exist, they are kucrative and impossible to ignore. Women’ roles and women’s rights are being raised as fundamental issues for creating sustainable fisheries, there is a demand for recognition of the value of women’s work in fisheries, especial processing and marketing, and a strong effort to protect women;s access to those sectors.

And more but it is late and I am tired.

More photos tomorrow.

 

Here is my contribution to “The Daily Rights” our group bulletin:

 

The Right to Protect Ecoystems

 

The Right to Protect Ecoystems

 

Fish is food; trade is secondary. Ecosystems must be protected. Fishing communities can demand the right to protect the ecosystems that support them. This last statement evolves from my interviews with Pisit Charnsnoh, director of Yadfon, an NGO operating in southern Thailand. Pisit sees healthy linkages between communities and their surrounding ecosystems as the foundation of sustainability.

By establishing the right to protect and restore productive ecosystems, fishing communities establish the right to benefit from their efforts, harvesting the surpluses— the interest generated by natural capital.

Rather than fight allocation battles over scarce resources, Yadfon helps small-scale fishers fight for the right to increase resource availability. There is real power in taking this position, as fishers in southern Thailand have found. Villagers at the mouth of the Palian River abandoned use of destructive fishing gear, such as the push net, which destroys sea grass beds. They have created sanctuaries, and as their fisheries rebound they are helping promote the benefits of ecosystem protection to upstream communities.

By putting the ecosystem first, and harvest rights second, fishing communities establish their rights of governance over critical areas, and these in turn become less vulnerable to exploitation from outside interests.

As exemplified by the work of Yadfon, demanding the right to protect ecosystems has high publicity value; consumers can be encouraged to support good work—ecosystem restoration for community benefit—by refusing to buy shrimp from farms that pollute the waters communities are trying to protect. They can be encouraged to demand that the global food production system that fosters export oriented fisheries and aquaculture, not displace local food production systems. This premise of action that Yadfon has nurtured in southern Thailand, offers a useful model for artisanal fishing communities wondering where their power rests. From what I have seen in southern Thailand, fishers’ real power rests in restoring and protecting the ecosystems that sustain life.

 

 

 

October 13, 2008 Bangkok

 

 

 

Vivek delivering group input to the larger group, Bangkok 13/10/08

 

Let’s cut right to the chase, the process has its ups and down but is essentially good. It works. At least it worked for the last three days.

So here you are in this room full of people from all over the world how many of us? Somewhere between 50 and a hundred, I should have counted but I didn’t.

 

And we have this Statement, that we have labored over for three days, and it’s way too long and way too verbose, but it’s our baby and we love it like one, care for it, arranging every word as fastidiously as we would on our baby’s head.

 

Line by line we are giving it the final review, after we has hashed out our ideas in groups divided by language, brainstormed together, brought all our mutual and individual concerns to the table. And here is Thomas Kocherry, booming into the microphone, blasting the ears out of the simultaneous interpreters, who sit in a row of booths in the back translating in English, French, Spanish, Thai and all back in forth, as we sit with earphones listening to the speaker with one ear and the translation with the other.

 

 

Small-scale fisheries representatives, working hard

 

 

 

And Thomas has warned us that time is of the essence, and the clock is ticking but nonetheless we have to get it right and when it comes to Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) we get bogged down, as one guy want to include “professional organizations” as having a right to fish in MPA’s. No way! There is a visceral reaction throughout the room. We smell fleets, industrial interests. No no no.

 

Then wave upon wave of details: women’s rights, children’s rights, human rights, fortunately we did not get into fish rights as this would require a long bout of thinking, and we did not have time. (Let’s save that one for the next meeting)

Protect ourselves from tourism, wetland reclamation, demand our rights of access, demand our right to participation in regulatory process, “get out of jail free” cards for all fishers in custody for fishing across borders and other infractions. The right of small-scale fishers to fish across borders. And on and on 37 items too numerous to mention, but all valid, all important. I will attach a link to the full statement.

 

And there’s a lot in it I’m not too keen on but I say nothing because I wan to save all my energy for article 22, which I had thought we agreed would say we to not want eco-labeling schemes. But there in the draft is a qualifier, we don’t want eco-labeling that does not come from a participatory process etc. etc. etc. And I am dead set against this because I thought that those of us on the committee that drafted the language were unanimous, but we were not.

 

So when I asked for the change back to no eco-labeling, period. One member was very adamant that the language stays in there. It almost did. Thomas said are we happy with this? And one person said yes and he said okay let’s move on and I said wait a minute one person said yes. And then I had to go to the mic and explain why I was so adamantly against endorsing any form of labeling other than point of origin, is that it is a tool of industrial fisheries, and designed solely for export fisheries. Essentially, eco-labels keep the door open for powerful countries to exploit fisheries in less powerful countries.

 

 

 

 

 

Coming to the end ot the day.

 

At a time when everyone wanted to go I hung on, and gradually an understanding spread through the room that eco-labels did not serve the small scale. And Thomas hollering at me that I was holding up the process, “It’s all your fault Paul, and I can hear in his voice that he is having fun, almost ready to laugh and many of us are any way, and I am shouting back, put it to a vote put it to a vote and he does and it passes and I feel so relieved.

 

This is what I came here to do, to make sure the language does not get watered down with qualifiers that turn strong positions into pudding that the interests that want to literally kill us, will eat up with pleasure.

 

So it stuck, and I went to resolve the issue with the person most insistent on qualifiers, and it turns out she works for an NGO that is linked to an organization that does eco-labeling of, among other things, farmed salmon!

 

But it sticks, and I was exhausted from the adrenaline, and the statement has lots of trouble spots but it’s done and the vast majority of us are willing to sign it.

 

 

 

We did it!

 

So then off to the conference, which will start in earnest tomorrow.

 

14 October 2008, Bangkok

 

Access To What?

 

Nearly two hundred people listened to a series of informative speakers at opening of the Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries Conference, in Bangkok yesterday. But one speaker in particular deserves particular attention: Cosme Caracciolo, secretary of the Confederation of Artisanal Fishers of Chile (CONAPACH). pointed out a long ignored yet extremely important fact in the fisheries discussion. “Here today we cannot ignore the economic crisis that is going on in world,” said Cosme. “The economic model has failed, and yet this same model is being used in fisheries in the form of ITQ’s and aquaculture.”

While the failure of the neo-liberal model is now evident, academic missionaries, to use a phrase coined by another speaker, continue to promote it in fisheries. Cosme went on to explain that fishers around the world try in many ways to tell their respective governments how this model has failed. “But governments listen more closely to others,” he said.

“What works is the collective approach,” Cosme asserted, and he speaks from experience. In Chile artisanal fishers have formed almost 1000 collectives that have gained jurisdiction over local fishing grounds for benthic resources, and managed to restore local ecosystems and increase production and profits from several important species.

“Small-scale fisheries are the solution,” said Cosme.

As Cosme spoke, someone in the audience whispered: “He’s a socialist.”

But in a later discussion, Cosme pointed out that the small-scale fisheries approach to sharing, “equitable distribution,” predates Marxism. Indeed, the concept is enshrined in the world’s oldest religious tennets.

When asked whether Capitalism had failed fisheries, Cosme looked benused. “With seventy percent of the world’s fisheries in trouble, that should be obvious,” he said.

“Once fishing became a solely commercial enterprise it was trapped in an endless quest for growth, always seeking greater efficiency to increase production, and this has had an inverse effect on sustainability.

“The failure of fisheries is 100 percent the result of Capitalism,” said Cosme.

Examples of truly sustainable fisheries in the world support this claim. Most are sustainable because they limit the Capitalist model’s ability to function.

One of the best known sustainable fisheries in the USA, the Maine lobster fishery, forbids absentee ownership of boats, the Captain must be the owner, and must be on board when the boat is fishing. In addition to this and other regulations, Maine lobster fishers are limited in the number of traps they can fish, and the horsepower of their boat engines. There is nowhere for the capitalist model of increasing efficiency and consolidating resource access under absentee owners, to gain a toehold in this fishery, and that is the fundamental reason for it’s sustainability. While a state enforcement agency oversees the Maine lobster fishery, fishers themselves enforce these regulations, and the social stigma of getting caught breaking the rules is worse than any punitive fine.

The collectives of Chile operate in a similar manner. “For those of us for whom fishing is a way of life, sustainability is top priority,” said Cosme. He believes as many here do, that traditional modes of regulating fisheries hold the keys to sustainbility. And based on the crashing of industrial fisheries and the success of the ancient anti-capitalist system, one wonders when the governments and regulators will “get it.”

 

 

 

15 October, 2008 Bangkok, Thailand

 

An interview with Rolf Willman, FAO, organizer of the Securing Suatainabiltiy in Small Scale Fisheries Conference.

 

How do you feel about the sentiments expressed by some members of the civil society that the conference has not given adequate time for presentation of the civil society statement?

Well they [the organizers of the Civil Society preparatory meeting] insisted on presenting on the first day and I was under pressure to stick with the timetable. But they have been well represented in the presentations and on the panels. Today we had Zoila Bustamante’s presentation, a wonderful presentation, and tomorrow we have Chandrika Sharma, and a panel with Nalini Nayak.

So I did no think it was fair to say that civil society did not have a voice. And theirs is not the only voice. There is also the opportunity to listen and question. How often does civil society get a chance to question a representative from the World Bank?

And Bjorn, I realize he is and academic, but he made some very good points. And believe me, everyone who is here is committed to small-scale fisheries.

At the same time civil society does not have all the answers, small-scale is not a guarantee of sustainability, I remember in 1990 in Kunyakumari, asking a small scale fisher about limits, and he implied that there were none. He would not be saying that now. Ask Vivek about what could have been avoided if they had listened to me back then. (Vivekanandan agreed that there had been over-capitalization in the small-scale sector, and that Rolf’s warning about the impending collapse of the shark fishery had proven all too true.)

 

Fair enough, but I think the position of some of the members of the civil society group feel that since collectively we represent thousands of fishers in 30 different countries, we should have more time than say government official. I think there are a lot of people here who have fought very hard to get their voices heard, and they may have come with an expectation that at this conference belonged to them.

I admit this conference could have been better designed, if we could have known that civil society would be producing a statement, of course we could have made time, but everything was put together rather quickly and none of our organizers from civil society raised the issue, and now the program is set and there is no time.

You have to understand too, how far we have come, this conference would not have been possible even a few years ago. But we have been working together, and some of these people, Dow from Senegal for example, he sits at the table with government, with the decision makers when before they would not even listen.

At the same time, small-scale is not a guarantee of sustainability

 

Can you talk about that process, how did this conference come about?

 

Well I started working with small-scale fishers in India in 1979, where I met John Kurien. All the work I have since done with small-scale fishers has been informed by my experience of those two years in India. This led to my participating in the formation of the ICSF in 1986, that came out of two conferences that were held in 1984: The World Fisheries Conference, organized by the FAO, and an almost counter conference, the International Conference of Fishworkers and Supporters, organized by John and others. The was the start of the ICSF, all the initials are there, just not in the same order.

Then there were two other FAO conferences, the COFI in 2006 and the Sharing the Fish in 2007 and the small-scale sector was not well represented, and we realized there was a need to strengthen their participation. So we put this conference together very quickly, in two months really, from the time it was approved. And I have to say the only reason I was able to do that was because of my long association with the small-scale sector, and the many connections I have made over the years.

 

So is this just the beginning, will there be more such conferences to come?

I hope so, I hope that this is just a step that future conferences can build on, but I have to say this is the last one that I will organize. There may be others but they will have to be organized by someone else.

For now, we are looking forward to the Fisheries Conference in March of 2009, this will be the largest conference yet and we are looking for a strong representation of the small-scale sector. We are counting on all of you to show up there and make a contribution.

 

Is there any point in particular that you would like to make?

 

Just this: Fisheries are an example of all the problems humanity faces, we have seen it all, and UUI fishing is comparable to greenhouse gases. We have the experience, and the lessons from all the problems of humanity. And humanity now is approaching g a time of great difficulty.

 

 

Nandankumar, Salvador Fermin Chow, Thomas Kocherry

 

Thomas Kocherry began his vocation working with fishworkers and fish harvesters on the coast of Kerala, India, in the mid 1970ís, and has since become a well known, and often controversial, figure in the artisanal fisheries movement of India and around the world. He has been instrumental in the formation of several important fishworker oganizations, including the National fishworkers Forum, of India (NFF), the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers (WFF), and the World Forum for Fisher People (WFFP).

One thing is certain about Tom: he cares deeply about fishing people, particularly those of developing countries.

So Tom, what do you think about the conference?

 

I will tell you, this is a great achievement of small scale organizations coming together and interacting with each other.

But we have a bog problem. Who are the small scale fishers? People from Iceland, America, India, Pakistan Africa, all call themselves small-scale fishers. Itís confusing. In my opinion there are certain characteristics that define small-scale fisheries: they are usually beach based, or in small harbors; they are owner operator, and the people depend on fishing for their subsitence and livelihood.

A big problem is that small-scale fisheries in Norway and Iceland, and the North, are often highly commercial and industrialized, and they are giving as a solution to our probllems, that we should modernize.

This is ridiculous! Ten million fishers we have in India, If they all modernized it would be chaos. And who is going to invest in modernizing ten million fishers. This will only lead to consolidation as we have seen elsewhere. Thatís no solution at all, itís the problem.

So here we all are, all the NGOs, WFFP included, and we are talking about lots of ideas: the human rights aproach, and socialism, when human rights are being violated all over the world and socialism is in total collpase. We have had many meetings like this in some we have said we will reduce hunger, and yet hunger only increases. We have said we will reduce carbon dioxide, and still it increases. How can we acieve our human rights? How can we achieve socialism?

What are we talking about without reference to how to acieve it achieve it? Of course we NGOís will go home from this conference and we will survive, but what about those who are hungry right now and are waiting for some solutions, how will we help them. This is what I am waiting for from this conference. Without real solutions it is just a ritual.

My one hope is that there is still a 1/2 a day left and that in that time we will talk about how to actually achieve our goals, how to implement human rights. People are asking me okay tell us some solutions, but I say no, let us discuss this together.

 

So for instance, I would offer that the ìright to food,î be changed to ìright to local food.î

Yes thatís right. In India, in the mid 1930ís people realized there was money to be made growing indigo, suddenly everyone was plaanting indigo instead of rice, what was the result? A famine that left 20 million people dead.

 

I might also suggest we move immediately to owner/operator in fisheries and processing, that is if you own a boat you must be on it when it is fishing, if you own a processing plant you must be there participating. Eliminating absentee ownership will elimante the numerous exploitation problems associated with it.

Yes, thatís what I am talking about, solutions, let us demand that fisheries be owner operator, worldwide, and work to make this happen. Let us come up with ideas and act.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Hiromot Watanabe

 

Hiromoto Watanabe

 

There is an old saying in the United States: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” At a time when the harvests of fishery resources have pretty much flatlined, and fuel prices are rising faster than the price of fish, one way to maintain profitability is to reduce costs. “This is what I have been thinking,” says Dr. Hiromoto Watanabe, of the FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Economic Division.

“Since World War II fishers have been building bigger and more powerful boats, tending toward catching as much as possible,” says Hiromoto, speaking purely in his personal capacity, and not on behalf of the FAO. “But that trend is impossible to continue now. That model is no longer feasible, due to the rising cost of fuel, and due to the fact that it tends to be destructive of ecosystems.” As a consequence, Hiromoto sees cost reduction as the key to maintaining economic viability in fisheries. But more than that he see a need for a change in ethics among fishers themselves. “Less fish means fishers have to reduce costs: less power, using more efficient gear, and other alternatives, but the situation requires more that a technical solution. It’s an ethical problem, and requires a new way of thinking.

“Catch less-use less inputs-earn more,” says Hiromoto. “This has to be the ethic of fisheries in the 21st Century.”

In addition to reducing costs, Hiromoto also looked at ways improve marketing. “Fish must be high quality,” he says, and among other things, suggested landing fish alive—fitting a boat with a holding tank and aeration system may be more technologically feasible than relying on ice. “With appropriate processes for certification, branding could be another way to keep fish prices high,” says Hiromoto. In terms of reducing energy in the post harvest sector, Hiromoto also points out that dry fish fetch a very high price in the Japanese market. “But they must be the highest quality when dried, equal to sashimi quality, and the fish cannot have sand in it.”

But reducing energy input is more in the control of fishers, and that is where Hiromoto concentrates his analysis. “The trouble with reducing energy needs of fisheries is that the boat builders, the engine makers are all geared to the existing paradigm,” he says. “This doesn’t necessarily mean we must downsize the industry, rather it offers additonal opportunities in development of energy saving technologies.” Retooling the infrastructure will take time, but will undoubtedly trend toward energy efficiency.

As Hiromoto notes, has development has focused on increasing energy intensive speed and power, what is required now is a shift to energy efficiency. He points out that slowing down and shrinking the ecological footprint of fishing activities will improve livelihoods, while at the same time reducing environmental impacts. “It would be premature for FAO to take the initiative on this,” says Hiromoto. “That has to come from the industry and academia. When the concept spreads then people may come to the FAO and ask us to help integrate the various definitions and experiences of this new ethic.”

 

 

18 October 2008 Bangkok

 

Unity

Where to now

 

 

This forum, left us all with mixes of hope and worry. We generated so much energy, but as Thomas Kocherry asked, more or less, on the last afternoon, where are we going with it? Are we just going to talk and make statements. What are we going to do?

 

From my point of view, there were some important pieces missing from the statement that Civil Society presented to the Conference: precise language such as rather than accepting the FAO’s declaration that everyone has a “right to food,” we should specify that everyone has a “right to local food.” And also include some intial steps toward securing suatainable small scale fisheries: first on my list would be a call for all fishing and processing to be done by owner/operators the person in the wheel house or the office of the processing plant must be the owner. Getting rid of absentee ownership would get rid of a number of problems, such as capital entering a business where it does not belong and being used to opress fishers.

 

We walk away, bit by bit we dribble out of the hotel, with Beatrice singing a goodbye song to the tune of old angsyne or something like that. And she herself left us just a few short sweet hours ago.

 

There is one critical issue that needs to get resolved, as far as I can see: Unity.

 

 

 

The WFFP can’t get along with the WFF, leaders don’t speak to each other, grudges and such, and it will wear us all down. The WFF is more corporate, includes trawlers

And we fight like the Native Americans fought, and the Irish fought, everyone pursuing their own strategy and fighting each other as much as the forces that work against small scale fisheries. Those forces have the power of our economic system and governments behind them, often in some form of globalization. Those forces have a unified strategy, and while they do compete with each other they are all moving in the same direction, whereas we on the other hand… get lost in our egos, and designs, sacrificing the big important picture, for brief flourishes of vainglory, and I am as bad as any.

Ready to start a new self-help group: microphone-monopolizers anonymous.

 

The question is how can we stay focued, stay active, etc.

 

The final panel offered a few ideas. But what is really required is a unified plan of action. We’re working on it.

 

26 October 2008, back int he USA

 

Aftershock

 

 

Like many of the people who traveled from around the world to attend the 4SSF in Bangkok, Zoila Bustamante never intended to be an activist, she came from a fishing village and is one of those who backed into a leadership role. But she obviously belongs there. Zoila’s heart rendering speech about the difficulties that small-scale fishers in Chile face, resonated with everyone. Her discriptions of the trawling, industrial aquaculture, pollution, and other threats to their livelihoods and cultures, left the audience, including conference chairman Rolf Willman, stunned and in tears. Zoila gave voice to the feelings of many in her attack on the system that has ruined, and continues to threaten, the lives of millions of fishing people.

She showed a photograph of a small open boat docked in her homeport. “I hope that in ten years time, I can come back and show you this same picture,” she said.

 

Ten years! That is not a long time. The fact that Zoila did not say fifty years, or even twenty is indicative of how little time is left for the work of turning things around.

And yet the powers that be, the World Bank and FAO, while beginning to realize the true nature of the situation, are still reluctant to admit to how wrong they have been. When presented with the acid test questions for economists seeking sustainability: “Do you believe in infinite economic growth?” and “Do you believe technology can substitute for natural capital?” World Bank economist Kieran Kelleher equivocated.

Infinite economic growth, and the substitutability of technology for natural resources and functioning eco-systems, are the fundamental myths of our unsustainable economic system. To the first question, Kelleher posited that growth would be limited in areas of the economy that relied on natural resources. “What areas don’t ultimately rely on natural resources? I asked. To the second question Kelleher acknowledged that there might be less substitutability that originally believed. These answers are mildly reassuring but far from the decisive understadning necessary to affect change.

In some regards the financial crisis is the small-scale fishers’ best friend, because it is the only signal that the registers in this system, and it is clearly saying, “something is wrong.” Of course we have all known that for a long time. The truble is that the finacial crisis does not indicate that the cultural structures and eco-systems that we need to survive have been plundered in the name of “economic growth.”

 

 

Jean-Claude Yoyotte is a plainspoken fisher, and he asked for the podium when he addressed the audience in the last hours of the conference, because as he said, he did not want his back to the people. A tall black man with grey hair and a wisp of a white goatee, dressed in simple clothes, he took the podium as though he owned it.

“I have not said much,” he said. “I have been listening and watching, people and the flow of ideas.” He pointedly did not thank anyone. “When I say thank you,” he said, “it means something. When someone does something for you or gives you a fish, we say thank you.” The inference was clear: the FAO had done nothing of real value for small-scale fishers. Jean-Claude went on, pointing out what was happening around the world, that fish are being killed for nothing and people are dying. “And for this we are supposed to say thank you?” he asked.

Time was short and Jean-Claude did not mince words. “We cannot go home from here and go to sleep, say we had a good time in Thailand and do nothing. The struggle must continue and the time has come to demand that the FAO become a tool for us to use rather than a tool of government. The FAO does not do enough for us, government is not the answer, we are the answer, and together we should create a Tsunami effect, flood them. We all know that fish do not jump into the boat,” he said. “We have to work to catch fish, and we have to work for this.”

In the final hours of a conference that had cost tens of thousands of dollars, Jean-Claude made a very important point. That it is the job of all small-scale fishing people to claim the tools that belong to them, to take over the FAO the way he had taken the podium. He had demonstrated the first little wavelet of the Tsunami effect he spoke about, and called on all of us to do the same.

 

It is possible.

Jean-Claude is a simple man, a fisher, Zoila has had the smell of fish on her hands since childhood, and the author of this article, has earned his living in this business since youth, and we all have stepped into the roles necessary to contribute to the survival of the fishing people and the cultures we care deeply about. But eventually those people have to take on the struggle in the form of a mass movement, and, as Jean-Claude said, create a Tsunami effect of action.