Bringing Rocks To A Dynamite Fight: Fishers Take On Blast Fishing In Peru

Nighttime falls on the fishing port of Chimbote, a city on Peru’s Pacific coast in Huarmey province. Almensor Gómez, an artisanal fisherman, prepares to leave home with five fellow fishers. But they aren’t going fishing. Instead, the group will stand guard tonight against poachers who use bombs to fish.

Armed with handguns, shotguns “and who knows what else,” says Gómez, their adversaries, “who are not so much fishermen as they are criminals,” set off explosions in the ocean to collect fish. “We have never had deaths, but we’ve had injuries,” says Gómez, who no longer complains to the captain of the port “because it does not help.” Once, one of his friends received a death threat upon arriving home, he says.

Fishing with bombs, or blast fishing, is considered one of the most devastating methods of fish collection. It is prevalent elsewhere in Peru and in several other countries in Latin America and beyond. Some records say the practice began in the Philippines, where fishermen used dynamite left over from the two world wars. However, there is evidence that it was practiced in Peru even earlier. Robert Cooker, a U.S. aquaculturist, discussed the practice in reports on a study he conducted for the Peruvian government between 1908 and 1910. Today in Peru, “the extensive mining activity makes access to dynamite relatively easy,” said Juan Carlos Sueiro, the fisheries director for the Peruvian branch of the international NGO Oceana.

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