Image: IPS-Inter Press Service / FIS

Spanish Fishing Consortia Impact Artisanal Fishing in Central America

The following is an excerpt from an article published by IPS-Inter Press Service:

Spanish transnational fishing companies, especially in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, have aimed to exploit ecosystems and labor and then export the products to the most profitable consumption areas.

Source:Stockfile FIS

Industrial tuna fishing and a shrimp aquaculture megaproject, developed by Spanish consortiums in Central America, put at risk the scarce marine-coastal resources on which families of artisanal fishermen depend, according to experts and international organizations.

In the case of tuna, the sector is controlled in El Salvador by the Spanish firm Calvo from fishing to marketing, and in Guatemala by the also Spanish firm Jealsa-Rianxeira, through Atunera Sant Yago and Atunera Nacional; while Nueva Pescanova raises shrimp from its NovaGuatemala subsidiary.

Spanish dominance

Source: Nueva Pescanova

Nueva Pescanova owns shrimp farms in the southern department of Chinandega, on the Nicaraguan Pacific coast, through the Camanica subgroup, in an area of 4,500 hectares of production.

Source: IPS

“Spanish transnational fishing companies, especially in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, have aimed to exploit ecosystems and labor and then export the products to the most profitable consumption areas,” he warned already in 2022. the report The impact of fishing companies in Central America.

Pacific Herring (Clupea pallasii pallasii) caught by artisanal fishermen on the Salvadoran coast Source: IPS -->

And it added: “The tuna they catch, the canned fish they make and the prawns they raise (…) are mostly sent to Spain, one of the European countries with the highest consumption of fish,” and in this way “they have built up an extensive resume of social and environmental damages, as has been documented in various investigations and publications.”

The Central American countries have not developed a tuna industry as such, but have opened themselves to investments from international consortia, such as those already mentioned, so that they can set up their canning factories, or acquire them from local companies and the vessels will sail under the flags of those nations, like Calvo, with operations in several countries around the world.

<-- Source:Stockfile FIS

The global revenue of that company, in 2020, was 616 million dollars and the country that contributed the most to this figure was El Salvador, the report cites.

The impact of bycatch

The effects on marine-coastal resources are caused, in relation to tuna, by bycatch: species without commercial value that the nets of tuna vessels catch incidentally and discard, but that do have commercial and food sovereignty value for artisanal fishing, such as dorado (Carassius auratus), among others.

Catching dorado has always been difficult for those who fish by hand, as it requires entering deeper waters; Now it is scarcer and requires greater effort, fisherman Eduardo Rivas told IPS, standing next to the San Gabriel boat, recently returned from fishing, on El Majahual beach, in the municipality of La Libertad, in the south of El Salvador. [Continues...]

Author: Edgardo Ayala | IPS-Inter Press Service | Read the article in full by clicking the link here (only available in Spanish)

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