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

The color of the sea has changed. From time to time you will see rainbow refection on the sea.We see oil all around the island and many times people who swim get some itchy skin anddevelop little boil looking thing. I have no experience myself but it occurred to many youngchildren maybe because they have young tender skin. There are lot of complains reported to thevillage councilor but I don’t think he will do something about it chiefly because he have no ideato raise the issue to the relevant authorities. The tuna factory is too big a company for us littlepeople in the village to fight them. The people in the village told us about some environmentalpeople coming from Moresby a year or two ago and did some survey on the island the water butwe have not heard from them to day.One of the effects of oil I see dead fishes alone the shore. Sometimes we saw many dead fishfloating around and drew our on conclusion that it must have been from the by-catch dumped bythe fishing vessels but it could be from oil discharged by the ships. People especially the fisheryofficers tell us that vessels are not allowed to discharge oil but who is there all the time tomonitor such activities all the time. It is possible anything could happen. They could easily offerbribes to the observers or the guards and do whatever they want to do. Asians are very good inall the dirty tricks available on earth.The dead fish and other waste SSTC dumped into the sea have attracted a lot of sharks near ourshores. Many people have complained they have seen all kind of sharks close to the reef. That isunusual place where sharks are never before seen often but now many reported seen sharks andit’s a danger for us. We are sea people- our daily livings depend on the marine resources andsuch stories scare people from going out to fish. I have seen two strange sharks some monthsago as I went to dive alone the reef. I have never before seen such sharks in my life. One ofthem looked like a chopper.Sharks come 100 meters from the shore. This is very shallow for big sharks but for somestrange reason they come. People are heavily warned to take precaution when going out to thesea and this is disturbing the normal conscious of the people and life. The fear of encounteringsharks certainly has some bearing on their confidence of going out to the deep sea for. This isdisturbing our normal lives.Now the fear people have is that continuous dumping of waste from the tuna plant would kill ordestroy our reefs and corals. They are like our garden and if they die especially women willhave difficulty fishing because they fish mainly alone the reefs and corals. The fishery officialtold the people before that the dumplings were environmentally friendly. We don’t trust thembecause it possible that fish and marine live can develop some poison from feeding on it andeventually the people eat the fish and die.Paul Mangoro, age 36, from Nuigo settlement. I have been working on the ship for four yearsfrom 2000 to 2004. I have been working as a policeman on the ship. They catch yuna, yellowfin, shark, rainbow runner, and many more kinds of fish. They tale yellowfin and skipjack intothe factory, 70 to 90 tonnes of fish. The fish is exported to japan, Bangkok, Taiwan and China.500 to 700 tonnes of fish are exported. The rejected fish are dumped in the sea between Wewakand manus. Yes, women exchange fruits for fish and also sell sex or fish, money and hot stuff.They are between ages 30 and 37 years. They are doing this on Korean, Taiwan, Philippines andPNG ships.Daniel Amarie notes on 27.7.05 visit to fishing vessel :During my observation on the fishingboats, apart from tuna, there are also other fishes caught like rainbow runners, trigger fish,157