The largest remaining seagrass meadows within the Mediterranean are in Tunisia’s Gulf of Gabès, a hotspot for biodiversity and fishing.But unlawful backside trawling and industrial air pollution are destroying this distinctive habitat, a pure nursery to quite a few species of fish and different marine fauna.Hundreds of trawlers ply their commerce overtly with little consequence, and many of the catch makes its technique to Europe, skirting legal guidelines designed to forestall the entry of illegally caught seafood.
KERKENNAH ISLANDS, Tunisia — It’s a wet afternoon within the port of Kraten, and all of the fishing boats are docked, ready for a winter storm to go. Some fishers have gathered on the port anyway, to have a chat and share a tea whereas arranging nets and octopus traps for the approaching days. Boulbeba Souissi and Najib used to catch and promote marine sponges, however after these grew to become scarce, Souissi moved on to snorkeling tourism and Najib targeted on octopus fishing with conventional clay traps.
“We want to provide nature the time to regenerate,” Najib tells Mongabay. “That is the way it works. I at all times say to different fishers, utilizing backside trawling, that they should cease destroying the marine flora close to the coast. But they’re deaf.” (Mongabay is withholding Najib’s surname to guard his livelihood.)
The archipelago of Kerkennah lies within the Gulf of Gabès, in jap Tunisia. The nation has the biggest inhabitants engaged in fishing actions within the Mediterranean Basin, with about 45,000 individuals employed within the sector. About three in 4 are devoted to small-scale fishing, though industrial fishing generates 62% of general earnings because of the giant quantity of seafood exported, primarily to EU nations.
Data on registered fishing vessels on this area come from the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, a U.N. group. The 22 coastal nations provide the information to the fee, however they usually exclude unreported catches, as is the case for a lot of small vessels roaming the Kerkennah Islands.
“There are a whole lot of kys boats that each night time are trawling the seabed. They trawl juvenile octopus too, so it grew to become harder for me to catch,” Najib says, sipping his tea close to the moist dock. “These fishers are conscious that, on this manner, the flora might be destroyed, however they go after the cash. It’s straightforward cash in the long run.”
Boulbeba Souissi holds an artisanal fish entice generally used within the Kerkennah archipelago, Tunisia. Image by Davide Mancini.
Traditional octopus traps utilized in Tunisia. Image by Davide Mancini.
In Arabic, the phrase kiss or kys means bag, and other people right here use it to seek advice from the form of the nets deployed by the small artisanal vessels that illegally trawl the gulf’s seabed, particularly across the Kerkennah Islands.
Bottom trawling, wherein a vessel drags a weighted internet throughout the seabed, capturing or uprooting something in its path, is towards Tunisian regulation in shallow areas of the Gulf of Gabès. Here, the biggest seagrass meadow within the Mediterranean creates an essential nursery for juvenile marine species, making it a hotspot for conventional fishers since historic instances.
About 15 years in the past, giant trawlers began illegally coming into the shallows at night time. It occurred sporadically, however small-scale fishers shortly understood the potential of mounting the gear wanted to trawl the wealthy seabed: drag nets with heavy plates to maintain them open, and extra highly effective engines. Some of them adopted the harmful kys trawling method as a result of they noticed the excessive profitability of trawling and didn’t wish to depart it to industrial vessels. Others continued with their conventional fishing strategies.
Due to a degradation of Tunisian state establishments following the Arab Spring in 2011, a tradition of tolerance towards unlawful fishing unfold throughout the Gulf of Gabès, and the variety of kys trawlers surged. Local observers with the German NGO FishAct counted 576 kys trawlers final December within the governorate of Sfax, which has jurisdiction over the Kerkennah Islands, representing a rise of 38% since 2018, when FishAct made the final depend.
A fishing vessel mounting unlawful kys (or kiss) trawling gear whereas docked within the port of Kraten, Kerkennah Islands. Image courtesy of FishAct.
As kys trawlers are formally registered as artisanal fishing boats, they will entry state-subsidized gasoline. According to FishAct’s report, printed in March, “[i]n 2018, the regional fisheries fee of Sfax carried out a compulsory inspection of the vessels previous to the supply of fueling receipts for backed gasoline, to make sure that the vessel doesn’t comprise unlawful fishing gear. But this measure was undermined, by eradicating the apparent trawling gear from the vessels previous to the inspection, and placing it again after fueling.”
Authorities’ failed makes an attempt to deal with unlawful trawling have generated frustration amongst actual artisanal fishers, who’re witnessing a depletion of fish shares and the destruction of the shallow-water seagrass meadows. Artisanal fishers discover themselves in a troublesome dilemma: whether or not to hitch the harmful kys trawlers or hold training artisanal fishing, understanding that shares are declining they usually can’t compete with the kys vessels’ effectivity.
Posidonia oceanica is the Mediterranean’s most essential endemic seagrass species and constitutes strictly protected habitats below the Bern and Barcelona conventions, to which Tunisia is a contracting get together. Seagrass is a vital stabilizer for the nation’s coastlines, that are experiencing a number of the highest charges of coastal retreat on the earth. The marine meadows play crucial climate-related and ecological capabilities, sequestering CO2 and enhancing water high quality by oxygenation. For this motive they’re typically collectively known as the Mediterranean’s lung. P. oceanica meadows are a biodiversity hotspot, housing practically 20% of all Mediterranean species whereas making up just one.1% of the ocean’s whole floor space.
Despite their acknowledged environmental significance, seagrass meadows within the Mediterranean have regressed an estimated 34% over the previous 50 years, in line with a 2015 paper, mimicking international seagrass declines. “Full restoration of P. oceanica meadows is often thought of irreversible in human time-scale, as a result of it’s a slow-growing species with a low restoration charge,” the paper warns.
A kys (or kiss) trawling vessel leaving the port of Sidi Mansour, Kerkennah Islands. Image courtesy of FishAct.
The seagrass Posidonia oceanica, an essential habitat for marine life and stabilizer of Tunisia’s coastlines, that are experiencing a number of the highest charges of coastal retreat on the earth. Image by Melina Marcou through Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Lobna Boudaya, a life science researcher on the University of Sfax, is coordinating a analysis challenge on the island of Djerba, on the southern finish of the Gulf of Gabès, shifting seagrass from areas the place it’s nonetheless plentiful into areas the place it has disappeared to check the optimum situations for transplantation and its influence on coastal restoration. The challenge is an try and reverse the lack of the seagrass meadows. Boudaya advised Mongabay trawling and phosphogypsum air pollution from industrial websites are the primary causes for the gulf’s lack of seagrass.
Phosphate crops belonging to Groupe Chimique Tunisien discharge 14,400 metric tons per day of untreated phosphogypsum waste straight into the Gulf of Gabès, analysis reveals. This byproduct is extremely harmful to marine wildlife. The phosphate product itself is a basic element of agricultural fertilizers, and it constitutes a serious export for Tunisia, the world’s fourth-largest producer, which sends its phosphate primarily to Europe.
Although export of phosphate and seafood to Europe is a vital pillar of southern Tunisia’s economic system, authorized requirements created to forestall environmental injury are often skirted alongside the availability chain. Tens of white refrigerated vans run backwards and forwards on the highway connecting the three predominant Kerkennah Islands all day lengthy. The middlemen managing the white vans accumulate fish merchandise coming both from kys trawlers or artisanal fishers, like Najib. The vans deliver the seafood to the ferry connecting with the business port of Sfax, the place many seafood exporters are primarily based. Although illegally caught, seafood like octopus, squid, blue crab and rose shrimp can simply discover a technique to European markets, the primary vacation spot of Tunisian fish exports.
“In concept, the middlemen shouldn’t be in a position to promote to exporters, as a result of they want a catch certificates that proves the fish was caught respecting the foundations, which isn’t the case for kys trawling,” a management-level worker of a serious exporting firm in Sfax, who requested anonymity for security causes, advised Mongabay. “In follow, they current all of the certification wanted to be exported. It doesn’t make sense.”
A fish store on the ferry arrival in Sidi Youssef. Image by Davide Mancini.
The port of Kraten. Image by Davide Mancini.
The worker mentioned excessive ranges of corruption amongst some Tunisian authorities within the Gulf of Gabès are enabling systematic falsification of the paperwork EU importing nations require as a method of stopping fish merchandise caught by unlawful, unreported and unregulated (or IUU) fisheries from crossing their borders.
Interviews by Mongabay with workers of exporting firms, fishers and middlemen point out that IUU catches often attain the EU market, bypassing the paper-based catch certificates scheme.
A current report on kys trawling in Tunisia by FishAct and London-based NGO Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) confirmed that IUU catches could also be coming into the EU, particularly Italy and Spain, whereas underscoring the environmental hurt the unlawful trawling causes. “This additionally emphasises the significance of fisheries transparency,” Steve Trent, EJF’s CEO and founder, advised Mongabay by electronic mail. “Without it, customers within the EU could unknowingly be contributing to the destruction of this treasured ecosystem and the erosion of the livelihoods which depend upon it.”
The storm will proceed all day lengthy, Najib says as he leaves the dock at Kraten for his home. He provides that he feels fortunate to have one after a few years of labor. That’s not the case for a lot of younger fishers at this time given Tunisia’s present financial instability, he says.
Boulbeba says that when summer time comes he’ll resume his snorkeling lessons to show his ardour for the ocean to native children and to indicate them the great thing about untrawled seabed. Recently, he and different native snorkelers got here up with the concept of a “kys entice,” a collection of concrete blocks with robust metal hooks. They’ve been inserting the traps on the shallow seabed round Kraten Island to wreck the nets of any kys boat that makes an attempt to trawl the seagrass. Both Najib and Boulbeba hope the brand new generations will pay attention to the habitat the trawlers are destroying, and see the marine ecosystem as one thing to respect, to revive and to guard sooner or later
Boulbeba Souissi stands in entrance of an anti-trawling mural within the port of Kraten. Image by Davide Mancini.
This story was produced with help from Journalismfund.eu.
Illegal backside trawling widespread inside Mediterranean marine protected areas
Citations:
FishAct. (2023). Illegal shallow water backside trawling, i.e. “Kiss” trawling within the Gulf of Gabes, Tunisia. Retrieved from https://fishact.org/tunisia-campaign-report-2022/
Boudouresque, C.F. (2004). Marine biodiversity within the Mediterranean: standing of species, populations and communities. Travaux scientifiques du Parc nationwide de Port-Cros, 20, 97-146. Retrieved from https://individuals.mio.osupytheas.fr/~boudouresque/Publications_pdf/Boudouresque_2004_Biodiversity_Mediterranean_SRPNP.pdf.
Pergent-Martini, C., Pergent, G., Monnier, B., Boudouresque, C. F., Mori, C., & Valette-Sansevin, A. (2021). Contribution of Posidonia oceanica meadows within the context of local weather change mitigation within the Mediterranean Sea. Marine Environmental Research, 165, 105236. doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2020.105236
Telesca, L., Belluscio, A., Criscoli, A., Ardizzone, G., Apostolaki, E. T., Fraschetti, S., … Salomidi, M. (2015). Seagrass meadows (Posidonia oceanica) distribution and trajectories of change. Scientific Reports, 5(1). doi:10.1038/srep12505
El Zrelli, R., Rabaoui, L., Abda, H., Daghbouj, N., Pérez-López, R., Castet, S., … Courjault-Radé, P. (2019). Characterization of the function of phosphogypsum foam within the transport of metals and radionuclides within the Southern Mediterranean Sea. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 363, 258-267. doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2018.09.083
FishAct, Environmental Justice Foundation. (2023). Kiss of Death: How unlawful backside trawling threatens ecosystems and livelihoods in Tunisia. Retrieved from https://ejfoundation.org/stories/kiss-of-death-how-illegal-bottom-trawling-threatens-ecosystems-and-livelihoods-in-tunisia
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