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ECUADOR: Delayed Return of Fishing’s ‘Golden’ Years

Gonzalo Ortiz

MANTA, Ecuador, Jan 3 2011 (IPS) - “This year there haven’t been many ‘dorados’, but they’re beginning to appear now,” Ramón Díaz says hopefully as he disembarks with his fellow fishermen after spending the entire night out on the water.

But their optimism is not shared by the high-level experts at the Undersecretariat of Fishing Resources, who believe their hope is unfounded. The current season “is, and will continue to be, very poor” for the dorado (Coryphaena hippurus), known in English as the dolphin-fish or by its Hawaiian name mahi-mahi, and in Spanish for its gold-coloured, or “dorado”, sides.

In the course of the night, the drag net used by Díaz and his fellow fishermen has caught a wide variety of fish, including “15 to 20 big dorados.”

According to the FishBase.org database, the maximum length reported for a dorado is 210 centimetres, the maximum weight 40 kilograms, and the oldest age five years.

But “big” for Díaz is a dorado that reaches 100 cm, and he points out that in Ecuador it is illegal to fish for dorado measuring less than 80 cm.

Biologist Jimmy Martínez, a technical advisor to the Undersecretariat, explains that “We have to ensure its sustainability as a species, and following the code of conduct of the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation) we believe that the fish should have the chance to lay eggs at least once in its life before being captured.

“As we know, sexual maturity in this species is not reached until they are 50 to 60 centimetres long. At 80 cm, we are giving them the opportunity requested by FAO,” he says.

The size limit was put in place, according to an official from the National Fishing Institute, after it was found that some boats in a fishing cove on the Santa Elena peninsula, northwest of Manta, were using smaller hooks, and 95 percent of their dorado catch was juvenile fish.

“We had to stop that kind of fishing, even though the fish were being exported to Peru and were generating revenue. To that end, ministerial agreement Number 31 was issued Oct. 8, 2004, banning the intentional catch, transport, and foreign or domestic sale of dorado smaller than 80 centimetres,” Martínez says.

The species, that has many names throughout the eastern Pacific — dorado, mahi-mahi, dolphin-fish, doradilla, perico — is also found in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Although it is a coastal species, it breeds out in the open seas.

“Until 2000, the dorado fishing season in the equatorial Pacific was from December to May, and the boats took five to six day trips in coastal waters. But since 2001, the season lasts from November to February, and boats spend 10 to 16 days out at sea,” the expert says.

The fishing season coincides with the rainy season in Ecuador’s coastal region, but the dorado are available all year long during an episode of El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) — the cyclical meteorological phenomenon caused by warm surface currents flowing west-to-east across the Pacific Ocean.

But Ecuador currently finds itself in the opposite phase of El Niño. “We are experiencing La Niña, despite it being one of the rainiest seasons in Ecuador’s inter-Andean region,” Martínez says.

“At sea, it doesn’t rain, because there isn’t as much evaporation as in the warm current years. The rains in the Andes are coming from the Amazon,” he says.

According to the expert, dorado shortages occur in cycles. While 1997 was a bad year, 1998 was excellent, “because we fished for dorado 11 months,” but then in 1999 came “the worst crisis.”

Something similar is happening now: the 2008-2009 season went poorly, 2009-2010 was good, while the current period is “terrible, because the cold currents have not permitted the dorado to reproduce or grow,” he says.

The figures seem to corroborate his assessment. Ecuador exported 21.7 million dollars of dorado (in the form of frozen fillets) in 2007, and 38.5 million dollars worth two years later.

The dorado makes up 40 to 60 percent of the volume caught by artisanal fishers.

“For them, the dorado is the most important resource, because of the size of the catch and because they really know how to fish for it,” Martínez says.

“Artisan fishers are those who, despite having some very sophisticated technology, continue to do the actual fishing by hand,” he says.

For example, they use GPS and satellite information, and some of the boats have what are known here in the fishing community as “electronic” nets.

According to fishermen consulted by IPS, these are nets made of nylon cord that shines underwater to attract the schools of fish.

Their other fishing techniques are of the more traditional order, with the most popular being longline (a main line with baited hooks) and throw nets.

According to the Undersecretariat’s records, the annual dorado catch in a “normal” year ranges from 12,000 to 15,000 tonnes.

“The dorado is in first place (35 to 45 percent) in Ecuador’s white fish exports (both fresh and frozen) so far this century,” biologist Luis Arriago, former deputy secretary of fishing resources, tells IPS.

It is also widely consumed in Ecuador. “Its raw meat is whitish, tending to pink, and of excellent quality,” says Julio Pincay, chef at one of the restaurants on Manta’s El Murciélago beach.

But if no dorado are caught, the whole chain of marketing and consumption comes undone. “The problem is that the scarcity of dorado will affect the 35,000 artisan fishers along the entire Ecuadorean coast,” Martínez says.

Relying on those fishers are, of course, their families, but also — indirectly — the truckers, intermediaries and vendors, as well as the processing industry and exporters.

“A bad year for the dorado is a bad year for tens of thousands of people in Ecuador,” he says, stressing that “We have to speed up plans for sustainable management of the dorado, a resource of vital importance to the country.”

The plan is based on regulation and monitoring of dorado offloading from fishing vessels in Ecuador’s main ports, for industrial and artisan fishing alike, and further biological research of the species. “We will be the first country to have a dorado management plan,” Martínez says.