“I no longer have resources, and there are no resources,” says Jacinto Galán, chairman of the Association of Shipowners and Artisanal Fishermen of San José, a bay in the city of Lambayeque, more than 700 kilometers (435 miles) north of San José Lime . The concern in his voice seems to be lost in the windy breeze whipping across a very long harbor that stretches almost a kilometer.
Galán owns three artisanal fishing boats that can transport up to 30 tons of fish or shellfish. He has just returned from a 15-day shift on one of them, several miles offshore, and has brought back barely two tons of catch. “It didn’t even cover my expenses,” he says, as the waves of the rough sea seem to try to drown the conversation.
Maritime labyrinth
The drama of this weathered man who died twice at sea is shared by many fishermen in this country, where the fruits of the ocean are the most prized ingredients in his cooking.
Artisanal boats under construction, in La Tortuga, northern Peru.Sebastián Castañeda
It has its origins in a very serious problem: craft boats are in large numbers and biomass is decreasing. You have to go further and further out to sea to fish, sometimes with sparse results.
Worse still, although Peruvian authorities announced in 2015 that the construction of artisanal boats (which have no mechanized equipment) should stop so that species like the giant squid (Dosidicus giga) do not disappear, illegal shipyards are like so many lumber schools Fishing has mushroomed along parts of the coast.
EL PAÍS visited the bays of La Tortuga, Parachique and La Islilla in the north of the country and found that ships were built in courtyards, courtyards and in the dusty pampas. There are towns that look almost like shipyards with houses built around them.
Fishermen unload their catch from a craft boat in Paita, the largest fishing port in the north of the country.Sebastián Castañeda
In 2015, the Peruvian state ordered a halt to the construction of handcrafted boats. There were already too many of them and the fishery was in danger of becoming a bad business that could not be passed on to future generations. But in the more than seven years since then, unauthorized ships are still being built and even hitting the waves.
Today the Peruvian craft fleet is estimated at more than 18,000 ships. In 2018, faced with widespread illegality and informality, the country's Ministry of Production established the Artisanal Fishing Formation System (SIFORPA), for which 4,854 vessels applied.
By the July 2023 deadline, only 2,490 had passed the verification process. More than 2,000 applications have still been submitted, showing the level of informality that exists in these waters. There are also other problems, such as the covert registration of large ships as smaller ships. In short, supreme disorder.
Go fishing at the Aguas Verdes fishing port in Tumbes.Sebastián Castañeda
What the waves hide
“We used to go fishing at 4am and be back at midnight with 12 or 13 tonnes of catch. Now it takes days. Or we have to move to other parts of the coast because things have become difficult here,” says Carlos Yenque, manager of the National Society of Artisanal Fishing and boat owner.
His story seems to sink into the waves in Paita Harbor as he navigates among numerous craft boats anchored. “This one, for example, has a registration that starts with BM, which corresponds to a small ship of up to seven tons, but you can see that it is much larger. CM should be there,” he says indignantly.
This is an old trick typical of illegal fishing chicanery. Not only are new boats being built, which will increase the pressure on the marine animals caught by these vessels, which include the giant squid as well as the Perico fish (Coryphaena hippurus), but the registration of existing boats is also being shamelessly changed.
Workers build a handmade boat in La Tortuga.Sebastián Castañeda
A small boat, Yenque said, is 29.5 feet long, 10.5 feet wide and can carry about seven tons. These metrics correspond to a BM registry. A large boat is about 46 feet long, has a beam of 16.4 feet and can carry up to 32 tons. However, as we watch, several large ships pass in front of us, clearly not BM, even though their license plates proclaim this.
The unfortunate consequence of this is that although a boat is registered, its declared size may not be correct. Therefore, it overfishes by posing as a smaller boat. As if that wasn't enough, some license plates are cloned. Galán said a friend told him that while unloading his catch in Paita, he discovered that another vessel with identical registration was doing the same thing in Chimbote, about 600 kilometers south.
Of course, this flotilla of registration evasion tactics is not floating on clear waters. Widespread corrupt practices and a lack of ethical oversight are widespread. According to Yenque, two production department supervisors are responsible for monitoring 14 unloading docks in the Paita area. Elsewhere on the coast, security is similar.
A man works with the catch of the day at the Piura market.Sebastián Castañeda
Goodbye biomass?
Great regulations but little compliance; lack of government control on land and at sea; Many boats, little catch. This is despite the Peruvian Marine Institute (IMARPE) reporting last November that the overall harvest of squid has declined in recent years. It had previously warned that climate change would alter ocean productivity.
Still, since 2022, Congressman José Pazo — a fishing boat owner — has been pushing a bill that would extend the deadline for registering vessels by a year and allow about 1,000 more boats, as if the sea could withstand them. The proposal has not yet been approved.
Elsewhere, a law proposed by Representative Norma Yarrow that would criminalize the construction of illegal boats in the country's criminal code has already been approved by Congress. However, it remains to be seen what impact this law will have, and other problems related to illegal fishing remain. For example, authorities still need to clarify the regulation related to Law 31749, which recognizes ancestral traditional fishing and traditional artisanal fishing and reserves five miles of coastal sea for these activities. Among other things, it is intended to prevent trawling by industrial vessels in this area.
Artisanal fishing boats in Santa Rosa, in Lambayeque.Sebastián Castañeda
This would benefit fishermen like Felix Panta, who, in the same town as Paita, fishes near the coast for species such as cachema (Cynoscion analis) and suco (Palonchorus peruanus), which go directly to local markets, while squid usually goes to processing centers for export. In Peru, fishing regulations are like a ship floating on the sea.
A 2020 study titled “Growing Into Poverty: Reconstructing Peruvian Small-Scale Fishing Effort Between 1950 and 2018” concluded that Peruvian seas are becoming so exploited by the growth of the fishing fleet that it is driving many fishermen into the poverty were overthrown. It's getting worse and worse. Due to the climate, the giant squid moves far away, becomes rarer or dives deeper; Fish are no longer easy to get when fishing from an island or cliff. One day even the supply of ceviche may be affected.
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