The " Super Trawler " era !

Recreational fishermen towed their boats through Tasmanian streets on Saturday to protest the coming arrival of a Dutch owned " Super Trawler ".   The " Margiris " dwarfs the usual fishing fleet by a whopping 142 metres in length and has been allocated a quota to take eighteen thousand tonnes of Mackerel and Redbait.

The era of the Super Trawler is also being opposed by both Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace and there are indications that this may result in similar " warfare " on the high seas as was directed against Japanese whalers    operating  under the dubious guise of " scientific whaling ".

The advent of huge factory ships stirs a mix of emotions in public minds.   The first reaction is a fear that they will scoop up so many fish that the seas will become a virtual marine desert.   This would disadvantage the much smaller Australian fishing fleet and it rankles that this ship is owned and crewed by people from a country on the other side of the world.   Many feel that our waters are being invaded by foreigners - and that they are taking fish that belong to us !

The second fear is that whatever quotas are allocated will be exceeded.  Super Trawlers are virtual factory ships designed to process their catch and store it under refrigerated conditions until they return to their home port and discharge the catch onto the retail market.    They operate in the lawless domain of international waters     It is hard to see how the volume of their catch can be effectively policed.

Fishing commercially in Australia used to be the domain of men who put to sea in very small boats and sold their catch in the markets of the port from which they ventured.  Fishing was often a family business, handed down from father to son.   Much of the fish we eat today is imported.   It comes from all over the world and increasingly it is being produced in fish farms rather than being gathered from the wild fish in the oceans.

It is inevitable that in a hungry world which now exceeds seven billion souls, pressure on fish stocks will become unbearable.   The technology exists to modernise the fishing fleets to ever bigger vessels  trailing ever longer nets.   " Over fishing " is decimating the fish stocks in many parts of the world and consequently the fishing fleets are looking for new territory.

The arrival of the Margiris probably breaks no laws.   Australia is permitted to declare both the twelve mile limit of territorial waters and exclusive fishing zones under it's administration.   It declares catch limits on various species.    The problem is that the vast oceans are virtually " no-mans-land ", open to all comers and in this age of " globalization " we have no control in international waters.

Expect Margiris to be just the first of many such vessels  to appear over the horizon.   We are about to experience a food famine caused by drought and expanding populations.   The sea is the last bastion in the food supply and we may even see the world's navies keeping watch over their national fishing fleets on the vast oceans.

The sea seems to be the last of the lawless frontiers of this ever shrinking world !