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

asleep because locals come in numbers at night and very early in the morning about 3 -4am. Among them many women come to sell themselves for fish or money.He said not all security guards monitor the ship 24 hours and not all fishery observers arepresent all the time. Anything can happen at night and when the presence of security and theobserver are absent. The guard said his duty on the ship depends from 24 hours to 48 hours.Sometimes the next shift would be delayed and for a day or two and he stays on board theship. The guards need rest and if they do go off to sleep the crews can take on board localwomen. The crews would take turns sleeping with the women and give them good, moneyor fish in return.I could tell from watching both the locals and the crews that they were afraid of us (theguard, the observer and us). Before any of the crews threw fish to the locals they look aboutto make sure we are not watching. I pretend to look away and if our eyes meet I smile atthem indirectly telling them it’s none of my business. But the crews are weary of thepresence of the fishery observer and the guard. The observe yelled at them several times,“Don’t give them fish!” and other times he communicated in sign language. He would thenlook down to the locals and tell them to go away. The locals ignored his command and stillpaddled around throwing their fishing line into the sea pretending to be minding their ownbusiness.When we arrived on the ship there were two guards. One of them boarded the boat that tookus there back. The other a senior officer of the guards changed into his civic gear andjumped on to a canoe brought there by his brother in law. On the canoes were severalkulaus and some fruits. He gave them all to the crews. He a regular guard there knew thecrews well and was sharing jokes with them about women. On of the Asian crews wasstanding moving his hip back and forth saying “Puspus! Puspus!” while they all laughed.That particular guard disembarked the ship and was paddling around the ship with hisbrother in law. They were there from 9 .00 AM– 12.30 PM when the crews stopped work tobreak for lunch. We were sitting behind the shade by the huge roll of net above us where thefishery observer told us stories about his experiences in boarding fishing vessel and goingoverseas. He told us about going to Hawaii, Manila, Thailand, Los Angeles, Hong Kongand other ports I can’t remember them. The guard was also there whispering to me to askhim about what they do with the by-catches. The observer replied that the by-catches arenot needed so they simply dumped them into the sea. I figured out that the guard wantedthat the by-catches should be given to the locals to be supplied for domestic consumptionthen to dump them. The guard was against the idea of dumping by-catches….The other guard who was there sailing around with his in law came through the gapbetween the two ships and joined us. He only asked to share the food with his in-law and hewas straight to the cabin and came back with a 25 kg bag packed with fish. He hurriedthrew it on board the canoe to make sure none of the local were watching. He was able tohide because there were no canoes directly in front to see what he was doing. As soon as alocal man paddled past some 20 meters away he ordered his in law to quickly push the bagof fish under the canoe. Also the observer was telling his to hide the fish and was yellingsomething else pretending to order the man back. When the other canoe sailed passed us theguard hurriedly ate whatever that was left and jumped on to the canoe and paddled off withhis brother in law. I thought to myself that he was all these times waiting for an opportunityto smuggle the fish secretly without the locals seeing him so he came the other way.106