INDUSTRIAL-GRADE TUNA FISHING
Isla Taboga, Panamá, Saturday, May 23, 2009

As much as I love being in remote and beautiful anchorages, I also enjoy it when there is lots of activity around. I don’t mean the class of boating activity that includes weekend water-skiing and sea-do racing. No, I like to see some real ships. I remember being disappointed at the Chicago waterfront: almost totally dead: there were no ships in sight and only just the rarest of sailboats. In the winter, of course, there was less than nothing. Just placid old Lake Michigan. Manhattan’s rivers, on the other hand, were busy. I once stayed for a week or two with a friend whose apartment overlooked the East River. Every time I looked up from my work there was a tug with a barge or a workboat of some sort and even on occasional a submarine heading in or out of the Brooklyn Naval yard. I was always putting myself on board and wondering what would happen next, where the boats were going, what they were up to.

As you get close to the Pacific entrance to the Panamá Canal, Bahía de Panamá becomes a huge parking lot for ships. On either side of the channel and for several miles out to sea past the territorial waters limit (12 miles) merchant ships of all types are anchored: tankers, container and bulk-carriers, refrigeration ships, LNG carriers and large fishing vessels.

Here at Taboga Island there is a steady coming and going of tuna purse-seiners. They are about 150-feet long and cut like a yacht. The bows are high and the decks sweep back in a graceful line. The aft half is the working bit. Nearly amidships is a high tower with a closed-in crows-nest. Behind that come the hydraulic lifting cranes that are rigged out horizontally when the purse-seiners are dragging their nets at sea but are upright in port. Right at the stern when the vessels are anchored is a huge pile of net; the purse. The actual nets are dark in colour but they are ringed and buoyed with yellow floats. When piled, the nets are about 20 or 30 feet high. Finally, a huge bathtub of an auxiliary boat, probably thirty feet in length and very wide and powered by a huge and usually smoking and noisy diesel engine, is stowed for travel on an inclined slope at the absolute stern using the main boat’s winches. When ready for work, this boat is allowed to slide down into the sea. The roof of the bridge-house doubles as a helicopter landing pad. Each tuna boat carries a chopper.

On one of my several trips on the fast passenger panga between the island and Balboa Yacht Club, I met “Spinner”. He’s an American who moved down here when the Venezuelan government purchased a whole fleet of such tuna catchers from a USA company. He came to help the new owners to learn the ropes and to look after their equipment. I was curious about this whole high-tech, industrialised approach to fishing.

Each vessel carries a wide variety of crewmen, from the captain and the operations guys to all the necessary skilled trades necessary to keep a ship and a helicopter in business. The amount of capital tied up in even one of these boats is enormous. The amount of tuna landed and the price of tuna are critical to success. This means, at the boat level, that they cannot afford to be out of action for very long.


At sea, the helicopter ranges out ahead of the ship looking for large schools of porpoises. The schools of tuna swim below the dolphins. The pilot directs the fishing boat toward the schools. As they approach the ship launches the big bathtub off the stern and gets the purse into the water with the hydraulic arms holding the entrance open as wide as possible. The job of the auxiliary is to take the arm of the net away out to one side. Meanwhile, about five fast, one-man outboard (75 hp) speedboats are quickly dropped by crane or winch down the opposite side. They set off in a big circling movement to drive the porpoises (and therefore the tuna) into the deep and wide-open purse. The smacking of the fast speedboats on the water are enough to drive the fish and mammals in a particular direction. I have been told that the speedboat driver also use small “bombs” in the task, as well.

Once in the net tuna and dolphins begin to circle around. The latter will try to escape if they can. There is a ban on killing dolphins; I was also told that there is a marine biologist on each ship and he counts the number of mammals killed. Once a certain limit has been reached, the vessel will have to cease fishing for tuna. So, with the dolphins and tuna (and whatever other fish including sharks and swordfish) are in the net, divers enter the water to help the dolphins escape. They actually physically guide them to the net’s open mouth, and sometimes they actually ride them up to the surface. It’s a dangerous job and every year some divers are killed and many are injured by the turmoil of the fish, by the slashing of swordfish or by the attacks of frenzied sharks.

Eventually the purse is closed and the net is drawn toward the stern of the ship and up the stern ramp. As it comes on board, thousands of fish are dumped out on the deck, thrashing and flailing. I am not sure how the tuna and other fish are killed, but the picture of all this activity in my mind’s eye is impressive. Eventually the tuna are taken below, while the other fish are separated. Sharks are also protected species, but perhaps the fishing vessel keeps the other eating fish.

The helicopter and the speedboats are meanwhile recovered. If it is very rough, it may be that the helicopter will not be able to land on the pitching vessel and will have to be ditched. Pilots are not infrequently lost too. How secure the speedboat drivers are is also an open question.

EAch tuna brings in about $2,800. Given the cost of the ship, the helicopter, all the equipment and the crewmen, it will take a lot of full purses to make a voyage a paying proposition. There have been up to five such boats just here in Taboga at any one time. They come and go with different ships here at different times. I don’t know how many in the fleet. Over closer to the Canal, there are more such ships and I have seen lots of them down at Manta, in Ecuador, which is the biggest tuna port in the world.

Down in Manta, there are many canning factories. The value of even a single fish is enormous and they are guarded like gold. The fishing port in Manta is a secure area. When they drive flatbed trucks loaded with huge, square galvanised-steel tubs of fish, the tubs are stacked up two or three high, covered with a tarpaulin and guarded by at least two security guards armed with shotguns as they motor through the city to the factories on the outskirts. Just one of those fish would be a bonanza for bandits. The commonest form of highway robbery up until recently was for a few guys to jump on board the truck, throw a few fish out onto the street to start a mob scene and to inhibit the police. Then they would drive a bit farther and hijack the whole load. I don’ [t know if carrying armed guards has solved the problem.

It is hard to believe that such industrial-grade fishing is not straining the world tuna levels. I shall have to research that a bit when I can get back on the internet. If so, the investment must be surely in diminishing returns. After all, the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, have already been closed to cod and haddock fishing because they have been nearly fished out by factory fleets from Canada, the U.S.A., and the E.U.

Still, it is fascinating to watch the crews practise their jobs while they lie here at anchor. They are probably also training new crewmen or working up the teams before putting to sea. I watch them launch the bathtub and the speedboats; I see the helicopters dipping and circling around the bay, hovering and then landing on the rooftop of the bridge-house. This morning, one of the big boats pulled up its anchor and steamed away to the south. The helicopter was already launched and had taken off into the distance. Maybe there are tuna just a few miles away. I wonder if there is a particular season for tuna around here. Chuy and Susan told me that soon the grey and sperm whales will be arriving off the coast from Chile and farther south. It is getting too cold for them down there. Maybe tuna and dolphins have the same or similar migration patterns and the tuna fishers follow.

Here's an article I found on SLATE's blogsite.

explainer
Tuna's Getting Scarce. Why's It So Cheap?
By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Thursday, May 15, 2003, at 5:57 PM ET
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A new study warns that overfishing has shrunk marlin, swordfish, and tuna populations by 90 percent since 1950. Given the crisis, why does a can of tuna still cost under a buck?

Because the species that end up in your tuna casserole aren't the ones being severely depleted. The Dalhousie University report focuses on bluefin tuna, particularly the southern bluefin, considered a great delicacy by sashimi connoisseurs. Southern bluefin tuna can exceed 400 pounds, though the average weight per catch is closer to 20; that catch weight has declined over the years as commercial vessels glean younger and younger fish from the oceans. The species does not reach reproductive maturity until the age of 8 (bluefin may live to 40), so overfishing has seriously curtailed the replenishment of fishing stocks. (The northern bluefin tuna, which can exceed 1,000 pounds, is also in danger, though a bit less so than its tastier cousin.)

As visitors to Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market can attest, a choice southern bluefin can fetch upward of $40,000—a price that makes it an uneconomical choice for, say, Starkist's Chunk Light tuna. That's why big-time canners instead prefer smaller, less flavorful species. Albacore, the so-called chicken of the sea, is what you'll get if the tin says "white meat." Also popular are skipjack and yellowfin. The former is considered the world's most widely consumed tuna species, and cans full of these species are often marked "light tuna." All of these tuna variants mature relatively quickly, with reproduction starting at the one-year mark for skipjack. That means the aggressive commercial harvest has had less severe consequences for these early bloomers. The casserole-grade species are also much smaller, with the average skipjack weighing in at 7 pounds. Smaller fish tend to be more numerous since they require less nourishment to survive and reproduce.

That's not to imply that overfishing hasn't affected fish prices for normal consumers. Once considered a cheap protein source for the world's poor, much fresh fish is now too expensive for all but affluent diners. A recent study by the WorldFish Center estimated that, in a worst-case scenario, prices for tilapia, carp, and other low-grade fish could jump by 70 percent, in real terms, by 2020. On the canned front, albacore, skipjack, and yellowfin stocks are generally considered "fully exploited," meaning that a marked increase in annual catches could, eventually, put an end to your supermarket's two-for-a-dollar deals.

Bonus Explainer: Another side effect of overfishing is the gastronomical interest in species previously disdained. Restaurant habitués will note the appearance of mahi-mahi on menus over the past decade; previously, the species was deemed a "rat of the sea"—too low-brow to be served in polite company.

Next question?

Explainer thanks Ransom Myers and Boris Worm of Dalhousie University.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for Gizmodo. His first book, Now the Hell Will Start, is out now.