Fishy business. The Social Impact of SST.pdf - Act Now!

on the side of the fishing vessel. They also have a 40 horse powered boat that they use forother sundry purposes like come to the market etc.When we were on board the Captain and four other crew boarded their 40 horse poweredboat to come to town to collect some food. They came back with the several plastic full offood items from the market as well as store food items and toiletries.The interesting thing to watch was the transferring of fish from the boat we were on boardto the mother boat named Saltlake which was occupied by Chinese and had a PNG flagweaving. In fact all the ships there had PNG flags flying high on them and I wonder whenPNG own these ships. Only by granting them license to fish or ‘rather steal’ in PNG watersthey have government approval to do so. The though made me angry.They are transferring mainly skipjack tuna with several tones of Yellow fin tuna. The wholeof the bottom deck was the freezer where they kept their catch. The net of fish was movedaround by pulley and they warned us that if the rope failed it would kill us we were tookextra precautions. The first load is from the freezer underneath to the surface and the basketit then hanged on to the pulley from the mother boat will pulled it over to its side anddumped it into its freezer. We got bored after several hours of watching.It was lunch and people we haven’t seen appeared on the surface. They were all these timesunderneath in the freezers sending fish to the surface. They had think and fury overalls theywear to go underneath.We befriended a Filipino who was able to speak good English. He said he was 25 and have3 other young Filipinos 24, 23, 22 work as crews with the Chinese. He was quite friendlyand told me that he didn’t like to work on the ship because its hard work. He graduated withBachelors in Science but couldn’t find a job so he works on the vessel for the last 8 months.He said his pay is not good enough compared to his other Chinese counterparts. He seemedquite compassionate, from time to time came to me and smiled and asked a few questionsand was harshly called on by his Chinese friends to get back to work. He threw from time totime several by-catches to the locals who were still sailing around in their canoes hoping forsuch chances.From the time we were there to the moment we left still more canoes were coming in whilesome sailed home after they are successful in their bid to get some by-catches. Locals of allages and size were there. There were old men and women, young as old as 6 and manywomen (I wouldn’t know if they would be married or not). Some of them brought somefruits such as ripe bananas, kulau, pineapples and exchanged for fish. They crews would askfor the fruits and they threw them on the boat and the crew would threw several by-catchesand some damaged tunas and others smaller in size.The Guard Dog security guard was there to mainly stop such exchanges and make sure thecrews don’t get involved in sexual activities with the local women. The guard from time totime scares away the locals from coming near the boat and chased away the womenconversing with the Chinese crews. I asked the guard if the crews and local women everbeen involved in any sexual activities. He replied that it happened and the stories are manybut he didn’t actually see any himself when on duty. He said securities are very easy tobribe because they don’t get good pay or some bonus from such duties (on board the ship).All they get is some fish because they are paid by the Agent though their security companyso it’s possible to be bribed. He further said that anything could happen at night if they are105