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“The ocean is harsh. And the work can also be harsh if the wholesalers eat all of it up.” So stated the narrator of La Terra Trema, in 1948. Luchino Visconti’s movie recounted the injustice skilled by the fishermen of a small village close to Catania in Sicily. They have been struggling to feed their households as a result of the worth of freshly caught fish was saved low by the wholesalers.
Seventy-five years later, the financial dynamics of in the present day’s world village have grow to be extra complicated nonetheless. Fishing has industrialised, and higher scientific understanding of its influence within the Mediterranean has set alarm bells ringing. The ocean stays a harsh place for a lot of small-scale fishermen within the 22 nations bordering the Mediterranean. However they aren’t the one ones struggling. The marine ecosystem is simply too, since its fish shares are largely overexploited.
In Mazara del Vallo, in August 2022, captain and ship-owner Mimmo Asaro was venting concerning the state of affairs of Mazara’s prawn fishermen, whose fleet of trawlers has shrunk dramatically in recent times.”‘If EU legal guidelines do not kill us, we’re nonetheless intent on residing [on fishing]. We wish to respect the ocean however what bothers us is that non-EU nations don’t comply with the identical legal guidelines. They work twelve months a 12 months. We cease they usually go on fishing. There are Italian [fish] merchants from Tunisia who promote at a lower cost than us,” he explains from the deck of his fishing boat. “It is unfair competitors. Everyone seems to be in opposition to us.”
![Fishing boats moored in the port of Mazara del Vallo, Sicily. | Photo: ©Davide Mancini](https://i0.wp.com/voxeurop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Pescherecci-Mazara-©DMancini-1024x576.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1)
At a distance of 160 km and some months, on the opposite facet of the Sicilian Channel, a special view is obtainable by a Tunisian shipowner and fish exporter, Ashraf Hammami. He’s in his workplace, overlooking the port of Kelibia, a coastal hub in northeast Tunisia. “The individuals of Mazara are complaining concerning the privilege they’ve misplaced. Sicily is now not aggressive for frozen-on-board fishing.” On-board freezing is typical for shellfish, equivalent to prawns. “Earlier than, we Tunisians needed to undergo Mazara, the place they then resold it. Now we do not, and that is why they’re complaining. We’re now not within the Fifties, when solely the individuals from Mazara had boats. When the solar comes out, it comes out for everybody. If the fish is lacking, it is lacking for everybody.”
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Between these two entrepreneurs who compete for fish within the deep worldwide waters of the central Mediterranean, there’s settlement on one level: we want a moratorium that’s revered by all. The choice is that many marine species, together with essentially the most worthwhile ones, will collapse. Each males have spent their lives exploiting the ocean: Captain Asaro was arrested thrice within the Nineties, within the Gulf of Gabes, for trawling in Tunisian waters. In 1978, Ashraf’s father dropped at Tunisia the primary freezer trawler, bought in Mazara del Vallo. “We learnt the enterprise of trawling from the individuals of Mazara. We exploited the identical space, collectively,” Ashraf provides.
knowledge from latest a long time (revealed by the FAO by the Common Fisheries Fee for the Mediterranean, GFCM), it’s clear that fishing has declined in Italy, simply because it has elevated in Tunisia. Extra usually, between 1970 and 2020, there was a lower in fishing by European nations, on the northern shore of the Mediterranean – and a rise by non-EU nations, on the southern shore. Over the past decade, Europe’s relative withdrawal has additionally mirrored activism on the a part of the European Fee. Beneath strain from environmental NGOs and in mild of alarming scientific knowledge, the Fee has inspired the decommissioning of fishing vessels, equivalent to these in Mazara, in an effort to scale back fishing strain and protect fish shares.
Regardless of this, the catch of marketable species within the Mediterranean remains to be excessive. 73 % of them are overfished, i.e. taken out of the ocean in unsustainable portions. This strain is estimated to be twice as excessive because the organic limits for sustaining fish shares within the close to time period. Within the Tyrrhenian Sea and central Mediterranean the recorded amount of pink prawn (Parapenaeus longirostris) is properly beneath sustainable ranges, whereas strain on the purple prawn is rising. The species that seems to be most threatened, in line with FAO/GFCM knowledge, is the hake (Merluccius merluccius), which within the Sicilian Channel is at an alarmingly low stage. All these species are caught primarily by trawling.
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