“Out of sight, out of mind”, this seems to be the motto of European diplomacy to perpetuate an industrial model that devastates marine ecosystems and threatens the food sovereignty of the coastal states of the Indian Ocean. At the center of the themes: tropical tuna.
To support this key sector of European industrial fishing, the European Union (EU), a few days before the international summit, deploys the full range of its diplomacy, including shameless stratagems and bad faith, to perpetuate a model of neocolonial predation of fisheries Indiana Ocean resources.
Although the EU has just adopted a directive on mandatory vigilance, the environmental and human costs associated with this market cannot be ignored: destructive fishing practices, tax evasion, human rights violationspolitical pressures… The ecological situation is critical in the Indian Ocean, an important hub for this trade: two of the three species of Thank you tropical plants are overexploited, and the third has been exploited for years beyond scientific advice.
These steel monsters use DCPs
Political discussions to remedy this situation are also in an unfortunate position, both the interests of the coastal states of the region (Kenya, Madagascar, etc.), on the one hand, and the “distant” fishing powers (EU, China, Japan, etc.), are instead divergent; the latter often parasitize the interests of the former.
The Seychelles, for example, in the heart of the tuna fishing zone, supports the foreign ships, especially European ones, which are based there and supply the tuna canning industry of the multinational Thai Union (which produces in particular the Petit Navire, the John West and Mareblu, omnipresent in Western supermarkets), but denies the requests of local fishermen, sacrificed in the face of foreign multinationals who have made the Indian Ocean their new El Dorado.
French and Spanish vessels are clearly identified as the main culprits of this imbalance: undisputed world leaders with 39 of the fifty largest tuna vessels, they have been competing in imagination for years to increase their catches despite the depletion of resources, all enjoying the unconditional support from the European Commission and their respective governments and administrations. Up to 116 meters long, these steel monsters use thousands of fish aggregating devices (FADs) to maximize their catches.