Earl Engel was celebrating his first capture and release of a sailfish
off Costa Rica when trouble materialized in the form of an 180-foot commercial fishing vessel, and a helicopter whose crew was said to have dropped small bombs that caused Engel and his fellow anglers to fear for their lives.
The
anglers, aboard a 45-foot yacht named Silver-Rod-O, faced a double assault: The crew of the Venezuelan purse-seiner (pictured) threatened to
plow over the yacht, but decided instead to encircle the vessel with
its net.
"Several explosives landed within 50 meters of the
boat," Gary Carter, the yacht's owner, said of the recent incident,
which prompted an outcry from a Florida-based fisheries conservation
organization and an investigation
ordered this week by Costa Rica
President Laura Chinchilla.
The anglers were able to flee and return
unharmed to the Costa Rican port of Garza. But the incident
is troubling because it's not isolated. It has happened twice to Carter, who lives
in Duluth, Ga., but keeps his boat in Costa Rica, and it has happened at least nine times to
other sportfishing captains during the past two years off the west
coast of the Central American nation.
"The Costa Rican
government has to do something to show these foreign seiners that this
sort of behavior will not be tolerated before someone gets injured or
killed out there," said Joan Vernon, a board member for
The Billfish
Foundation, which filed the complaint to Chinchilla and also notified
the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica.
These incidents have
typically involved foreign-registered seiners licensed to fish in Costa
Rican waters. Their crews, like those who operate sportfishing yachts,
are looking for dolphins, which often travel with tuna and other game
fish.
If large schools of fish are present and if
sportfishermen are in the way, the seiners will try to force them to
leave so the nets can be deployed.
The explosive devices are
"tuna bombs" dropped around the schooling fish -- usually yellowfin
tuna -- to contain them in a small area, while a seine net is set
around the school. The bombs are illegal in Costa Rica but apparently
are still used by some commercial fishing fleets.
Chinchilla said Tuesday that she has ordered a probe into the Aug. 1 incident.
Carter
said the previous encounter he had with seiners was on July 31, 2008.
A guest was fighting a large tuna when the seiner Lautaro arrived and
deployed a helicopter to make close sweeps and try to force the yacht
off the tuna school.
While the guest was struggling to land
the tuna, Carter said, "the seiner dropped its net to fully encircle
us. About 45 minutes later, my guest landed the tuna and the Lautaro
refused to let us out of the net for well over an additional hour."
Carter
said explosive devices were not used in the 2008 incident. Of the more
recent incident, when asked how loud and powerful the bombs were,
Carter answered:
"I cannot say how powerful the incendiary
devices are. With all of the noise from my boat and of the tuna seiner
with its speed boats, and the helicopter, it was not possible to hear a
blast. We could only see the smoke billowing from the water wherever
they hit."
The Billfish Foundation, a nonprofit group that works
with governments around the world to try to conserve billfish
populations, has been trying to persuade Costa Rica, one of the world's
premier sportfishing destinations, to take a tougher stance on
commercial fishing.
The group recently
completed a study that found sportfishing-related tourism generates
$599 million annually for the Costa Rican economy.
"If Costa
Rica won't address this sort of outrage and also take better care of
the marine resources like sailfish and marlin that drive this economic
engine, they will find people moving elsewhere and taking their money
with them," said Ellen Peel, president of the Billfish Foundation.
Peel noted that Costa Rica's southern neighbor,
Panama, recently outlawed purse seining within 200 miles of its coast. Guatemala, which is to the north of Costa Rica, does not allow seiners
inside of 110 miles.
-- Pete Thomas
Photos of the Venezuelan seiner and helicopter used to harass those aboard the Silver-Rod-O courtesy of Gary Carter
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