By: Staff Writer
September 13, 2022
We must not paint poor fishermen as potential drug dealers as they try to earn a living at sea.
Peter Murray, advisor at the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism, said on a panel hosted by Centre for Latin American & Latino Studies | American University on the threat of illegal and unregulated fishing in the Caribbean and Central American region that he is “concerned” over the “hard approach” on illegal fishing and particularly targeting smaller fishers.
He noted that they are being targeted as suspects in the illicit drug trade and it is having a profound effect on their livelihood and as more people move towards.
He also said: “There is an impression that there are a lot more people going into this because they are losing their livelihood in fishing and they’re moving to these other types of livelihoods, and then they’re going to be hammered again.
The attractiveness of fisher-folk going out to sea for up to seven days for $10,000 is extremely alluring and is “not unique,” in the drug trade Mr Murray noted. “ I know people in Canada who have done the same smuggling… across the border. So we are in a situation where those communities are ready to make that move, and pay the consequences also.”
Not trying to paint the narrative that “poor fishermen are potential drug dealers,” despite higher interdiction rates, Mr Murray added: “What we observed is that essentially, this is significant in terms of smuggling, and that it’s diverse, and it’s affecting a lot of region and that we see a lot more smaller vessels.”
He continued, “If indeed our research is correct, more and more small-scale fishermen are either willing or forced into this and that’s the bad news.”
This could be as a result of several issues, one of them could be that they are getting smaller catches that could be forcing them to get involved with the drug trade. The restrictions on marine protected areas are also having an impact on fishers as enforcement picks up in those areas.
Despite these concerns, Mr Murray noted that in their investigations they “didn’t see much evidence of illegal fishing in parallel to narco trafficking,” and that “there was very few instances,” which surprised them. These instances could be summed up in several “return trips especially for large boats that are not sunk at destination.”
If these boats are not sunk then they will be available to be used in illicit drug smuggling once again and that is another concern for the CRFM. A second concern going forward is the “reinvestment” into the smuggling operations as they make more money and are able to afford better equipment, larger boats, which will increase the capacity.