Missions: Mission Pirata

In July 2013, Pete, an Earthrace team of ex-services personnel and a volunteer support crew, plus the new Sealegs amphibious craft, headed for Costa Rica for a three month campaign helping tackle pirate vessels fishing illegally around the coast. Illegal fishing is like a plague for this small country, which is sandwiched between Nicaragua and Panama, with the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the Caribbean Sea to the east.

The country, which in many respects, has an enviable environmental record compared with neighbouring countries, has a number of marine protected zones around the coastline. Much of the work of Earthrace over the three month period focused on these areas, and they spent many days and nights observing and filming fishing activities around them. Footage obtained by Earthrace from Sealegs and from suspected illegal fishing vessels boarded by the team was passed to the relevant authorities. The offense of being caught illegally fishing mean’t anything from a small fine to imprisonment. Generally a first offense does not see substantial penalties imposed, but subsequent infringements usually see offenders spending time behind bars.

Why target illegal fishing? Going after the pirates that carry out illegal fishing activities is one of the most important issues in global ocean conservation today. The quantity of seafood caught illegally has been estimated to total 11 million to 25 million metric tons – the equivalent of around 20% of all seafood traded around the world. 260 million jobs are dependent on legal marine fisheries (source: http://oceana.org).

Whilst the widespread introduction of quotas, International agreements and an increase in marine protected zones around the world seeks to curb over-fishing by legitimate fleets, the effects of these are still almost impossible to accurately measure, and nor are there enough infrastructures available to monitor what exactly is caught and sold and in what quantities.

Pirates perpetuate the reprehensible practice of shark finning. In addition, do you think that a poacher who is stealing millions of fish is going to be concerned with the whales, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, seals, sea lions, manta rays, sharks, sea birds or any other creatures that are unlucky enough to be entangled in a driftnet, hooked on a long line, swept up in a purse seine, caught by a trawler, or blown up by explosives?”

In 2013, 280 Kemp’s, Ridley and Black sea turtles were washed up dead in the Golfo Dulce off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The Ministry of the Environment reported it believing they were the victims of illegal long line fishing.

Read more about the impact of IUU fishing here http://www.earthraceconservation.org/iuu-fishing.

The fruit of the sea: Shrimp trawling was big business in Costa Rica, but because of dwindling supplies and excessive by-catch, it has been phased out over five years. As permits expire, they will not be renewed.

Globally, shrimp trawl fisheries catch 2% of the world total catch of all fish by weight, but produce more than one-third of the world total by catch. It’s estimated that for every kg shrimp caught (legally or illegally), there are 5.7kg of by catch. (source: Wikipedia)

In July of 2014, all shrimp boats operating in Central America and the Dominican Republic, including Costa Rica, had to use turtle excluder devices, or TEDs, which allow caught sea turtles to escape from nets.

Whilst on patrol, the Earthrace team succeeded in finding a 70ft (21m) Costa Rican shrimp trawler it believed was fishing illegally. At night, the trawler was observed travelling at 8 knots into the marine protected area, where it turned off its lights, stopped and spent 40 minutes preparing its trawl gear. For the next seven hours, the trawler traversed in the same area at around 2-3 knots. It was deliberately operating within the protected area and at daybreak, he pulled in the trawl nets at which point the Earthrace team boarded the vessel.

The GPS was observed and filmed. It showed a history of fishing in both the north and south marine protected areas on a regular basis. There was in fact more data with him fishing inside the marine protected area than outside it! The only good news was that this particular trawler did have a turtle exclusion device fitted, although many do not.

Partners against crime: Earthrace Conservation worked closely with many people during their mission, in particular the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Oceans of Costa Rica (MINAE), and Pretoma, a Costa Rican non-profit that focuses on marine conservation and research working to protect ocean resources and promote sustainable fishing policies in Costa Rica and Central America. We'd like to congratulate them on the amazing job that both organisations do under often difficult and dangerous circumstances, and thank them for their invaluable assistance.

MINAE: http://www.minae.go.cr/ or http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.minae.g...

Before leaving Costa Rica, the Earthrace team donated some of the valuable equipment they used to MINAE to help them to continue their fight against the 21st century pirates that have become the scourge of the Costa Rican seas. This included weapons, radar equipment, VHF radios, binoculars, night vision goggles and an outboard engine.

Spreading the conservation net wider: It wasn't just illegal fishing on the agenda, there were sea turtles, marine reserves, poachers and much, much more...but you'll have to wait for the TV series to find out exactly what happened during the three month mission!

Have a look at some of the photos taken by the crew while they were in Costa Rica: http://www.earthraceconservation.org/mission-pirata-photos

TV series on the way. Jack is fine, back in NZ now. I'll be there soon.

OUR AMAZING TEAM: Earthrace campaigns on many different fronts but some are easier to garner support for than others. Getting a mission together to combat pirate fishing wasn't going to be easy.

Everyone loves whales and dolphins, seals are cute, sharks are 'jawsome' and dugongs may have a face only a mother could love, but they're pretty special too. So we'd like to thank everyone that helped with this campaign, whether with funding, donations, goods in kind, contacts, moral support and general goodwill. We couldn't have done it without you all. We'd specially like to thank our fantastic team of highly trained professional ex-services personnel and our filming and support crew - a group of amazing, passionate people, all there to play their own parts in this crucial operation:

Alicia Sneyder.  USA.  Camp Mum