Stage a Scene

Vanessa (Switzerland)

[Writing experiment]

This is a piece I used in a grant application that I submitted on 2nd August. I was completely blocked for over a week trying to think of a way to wrap up the many intertwined aspects of sustainability in seafood production – social, environmental, ecological, economic – in an Introduction that could be no longer than 3 pages.

The night before submission I was ready to give up, but then, while watching the fireworks of Swiss national day, I had an idea: to begin with a story based on the accounts of hundreds of fishers I interviewed in Ghana, which touches on all the issues I needed to cover and showed how they connect to the research question, which asks which gaps exist in Switzerland’s trade policies and legislation with regards to seafood imports. I used an exercise from the workshop and wrote the following:

The point of departure for the research question is best illustrated through a contextual visualisation. Imagine a fish trawler flagged to Ghana. The poorly maintained vessel is officially owned by a local business that, if one were to scratch the surface, would turn out to be a front. The senior crew are Asian, the lower ranking crew Ghanaian. So is the fisheries observer who records the catch and monitors the vessel’s activities for compliance with domestic laws. The vessel rakes the seafloor in search of fish destined for export. The ocean is exhausted here; when it comes up, the net no longer bulges as it did a decade or two ago. The captain orders pelagic sets, even though the vessel is only licensed for bottom trawling and the practice of saiko, or trading small pelagic fish bycatch at sea, is prohibited. As the tired crew haul in a net heavy with small fish, a rusty wire snaps, cutting one of the fishers in half – he dies instantly. His colleagues put his remains in the fish freezer. The remaining crew sort the catch, backs bent for hours. When one of the fishers stands to stretch, the first officer throws a plate at him.

At night, the vessel illegally enters the artisanal fishing zone and changes its pelagic net for a so-called box net. The crew eat some gari, their staple at sea. Their drinking water is brown. The men sleep on fishing nets crawling with cockroaches, rats and bedbugs, covered by a tarp that leaks when it rains. Suddenly they realise that they have crossed a canoe fisher’s net. All that remains of his livelihood is the debt he owes the fish mommy (trader) who financed his canoe. At night the sea is full of lights. For many small-scale fishers, the prohibited practice is a desperate attempt at a meagre catch in what was once one of the world’s most productive ocean ecosystems.

The hatches are full, food is running low and the water tank is empty. The captain wants to keep fishing. Net after net they pull in, discarding nearly all of the catch bar a few large fish. When the vessel finally returns to port, each fisher is given a carton of fish and a salary below the minimum wage. They would report this abuse, but without a contract, who will listen to them? The observer receives two large sacks of export quality fish to help with writing the report. The family of the deceased sailor receives 5000 cedis, barely enough to buy a casket. When the fisheries inspectors come on board, they raise an eyebrow at the amount of small pelagic ‘bycatch’ being lifted over the side. A few more cartons of fish later, the vessel’s catch certificate is issued, qualifying its fish for export to Europe. After a detour through Belgium, where the fish passes a compulsory screening for being legally sourced, it reaches a Swiss retailer. The shop’s website informs customers that its seafood is ‘100% traceable and sustainably sourced’.

The ending of the above scenario is hypothetical, but not unlikely. How is it possible that a food whose production clearly violates most people’s idea of sustainably sourced seafood can enter the Swiss market, and what role can private sector initiatives and public trade legislation play to ‘mend the net’ of loopholes when it comes to seafood sustainability? As is evident from the above scenario, neither traceability nor the legality of a product’s origin – whether legitimate or forged – should be conflated with sustainability.