Manuel Gonzalez, a veteran member of the Fishers’ Association of Rio Caribe, told that trawl fishing is destroying the fish species and so there is demand to outlaw the traw fishing. Groups of fisherfolk have been organizing protest marches in Venezuela’s capital against the use of trawl. They support the Law on Fisheries and Aquaculture amended by Chavez by decree-law banning trawl fishing.
Previously the law only prohibited trawling less than six miles from the mainland or less than 10 miles from island shores. But after the amendment the law bans trawl fishing in all Venezuelan waters, where Italian and Spanish ships used to trawl, not only Venezuelan fishing vessels.
Franklin Hernandez of the Socialist Fishers’ Front in the state of Sucre, told that the artisanal fisherfolk support the new law and are ready to supply as much fish as the demand. Elias Jaua, Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua said that outlaws of trawl fishing will not cause shortages as the small-scale artisanal fisherfolk supply 70 percent of production, and industrial fishing 30 percent. He states that trawl fishing provides only 6 percent of the total.
According to new law there is a one-year transition period, until March 2009, for the trawling companies and their ships to change over to other activities. Gilberto Gimenez, head of the Socialist Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture (INSOPESCA), a state regulatory body, informed that s six-month provisional licences will be issue to trawlers during the transition period.
It is said that under new law industrial trawlers have the opportunity to convert to other forms of fishing that are less environmentally aggressive. The new law gives state the power to fix the prices of fish products along the entire sales and distribution chain.
