Turmoil in Paradise Galapagos fishermen revolt against strict quota on lobster 

Jim Wyss / SF Chronicle 10dec00

When the fishermen who troll the crystalline waters of the world-renowned Galapagos Islands burned through their quota of spiny lobster in record time this season, they turned to a tactic that had served them well over the years - - violence.

What started off as a four-day strike last month to force the government to drop the quota turned into an uprising by hundreds of irate fishermen, who rampaged on the islands of Santa Cruz, San Cristobal and Isabela. By the time the navy arrived to evacuate a Galapagos National Park director and several volunteers, the mob had trashed the offices and field station of the park, as well as a scientific research station; in addition, several of the islands' rare tortoises were taken hostage.

Other groups blocked roads and waterways and frightened scores of tourists who flock to the Galapagos each year to witness the striking natural area that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

"The fishermen have learned that violence gets their demands met," said Rodrigo Jacome, the president of the Galapagos Civic Committee, a group of local businessmen.

The protests forced authorities to listen to a laundry list of demands, including permission to hunt the protected shark population prized on the Asian market for its lucrative fins. While officials managed to put off a resolution to most of the demands, they did raise the lobster quota by 60 percent, or 30 tons, to a total of 84 tons -- to the dismay of most environmentalists.

"The National Park came out looking compromised," said Ricardo Moreno, the executive director of Fundacion Natura, a Quito-based conservation group. "It looks like they were playing politics."

Some environmentalists say the lack of law enforcement stems from the 1998 Special Galapagos Law, which gave the islands more autonomy over their own affairs.

Said Ruth Elena Ruiz, Fundacion Natura's director of biodiversity, "While it has been positive for the government to give more control to local authorities, there are certain areas where the (federal government) needs to be more proactive, and one is providing security."

Just 600 miles off the Ecuador's mainland, the 13 Galapagos islands are a world apart. While the continent's economy has been hammered by the worst recession in more than a century and by political chaos, a steady stream of tourist dollars has kept the archipelago prosperous.

In fact, each year hundreds of mainland refugees head for the Galapagos to join fishing cooperatives or work in the prosperous tourism industry. In 1999, some 66,000 visitors visited the islands. Tourism authorities, who have a big say in the running of the islands, are said to be willing to give in to fishermen's demands to prevent any bad publicity that might damage their estimated $80 million-a-year industry.

The Galapagos were virtually deserted until the 1940s. By 1998, the population had swelled to 15,300, with yearly growth of more than 6 percent. An alarmed federal government then established strict laws to keep mainlanders away but has failed to enforce the restrictions.

The human influx is threatening one of the world's most intact and delicate ecosystems. The United Nations has declared the islands a World Heritage Site, and its biological marine reserve is the world's second-largest. According to experts, 96 percent of the islands' endemic biodiversity -- the multitude of plant and animal species native to the region -- remains intact. In contrast, the equivalent figure for Hawaii is just 51 percent.

Along with giant tortoises, marine iguanas and the blue-footed booby, the islands are home to a host of endemic species, including the only seabird in the world that cannot fly -- the flightless cormorant.

But nowhere has the strain of human growth been felt more than in the fishing industry.

According to the Charles Darwin Foundation, an international body that advises the federal government on environmental matters, there were 500 lobster fishermen in 1999 and a 54-ton quota for the September-to-December season.

In 2000, however, 939 fishermen -- their numbers increased despite a moratorium on both fishermen and fishing vessels -- reached the quota just two months into the season. Since there were nearly twice the number of fisherman, each man received $600 less than the previous year. As a result, they demanded the right to continue fishing until Dec. 31. When they were refused, the violence began.

There is much at stake.

Divers are said to catch an average of nearly 20 pounds daily, earning $170 a day in a nation where the monthly minimum wage is just $100. Exports of fish caught in the Galapagos account for more than 23 percent of Ecuador's foreign earnings, according to official records.

Galapagos fishermen first made world headlines in 1996 after slitting the throats of nine giant tortoises on Santa Cruz Island. At the time, they were angry over a quota set on the $9 million annual market for sea cucumbers, a leathery sausage-shaped invertebrate that sells for $2 each and is coveted in Asia as an aphrodisiac.

Last year, fishermen showed their displeasure again over the quota -- 4.5 million sea cucumbers per season -- by storming the Baltra Island airport and keeping the minister of the environment's plane grounded on the tarmac. They shot at researchers and park guards and took them hostage. In May, they took more tortoises hostage. They also threatened to release birds, cats, goats and weed seeds on the islands if their demands were not met.

Although authorities have briefly jailed some fishermen, they have never stepped up security or seriously punished anyone, said Jacome.

"We are seeing exacerbated levels of vandalism." he said. "As soon as the immediate situation is over, the federal government forgets about us."

Last month, the vandalism was most serious on Isabela, an island that had been protected by only two police officers and four marines. Juan Chavez, the director of the Charles Darwin Research Station, was forced to hide in a mangrove swamp to escape an angry mob. The fishermen stormed park offices and ransacked Chavez's house so thoroughly that even his children's toys were destroyed.

Looters also burned or stole computers and smashed windows, toilets and sinks. The research station lost years of scientific data.

"At the moment there is absolutely nothing left at the park office," said Chavez, who was rescued by special forces from the Ecuadoran navy. "We don't even have a pen to work with."

Although some Galapagos residents worry that there will be renewed violence once the lobster fishermen reach the new quota ceiling, a strike leader says that is highly unlikely.

"We were several weeks away from Christmas. Everybody was just trying to make some money, and then all of a sudden the government said they had to stop fishing," said Alfredo Ortiz, who led protests on Santa Cruz and is the island's mayor. "I can guarantee you that we will not see any more violence once we reach the new quota."

But some islanders fear that without beefed-up law enforcement and a concerted effort to check unbridled migration, there will be more violence.

"I don't understand what has to happen for the government to take this seriously," said Jacome. "The next time somebody is going to get killed."

Unnatural Selection

Rampaging Galapagos Fishermen Put Islands and Creatures at Risk

John E. McCosker, Terrence N. Gosliner / SF Chronicle 10dec00

ALL THAT is unique and special about the 13 volcanic islands known as Galapagos is at risk after the events that have unfolded since mid- November. Several hundred violent lobster fishermen went on another of their periodic rampages. This time, they attacked the Galapagos National Park facilities and Charles Darwin Research Station offices on three islands, harassed tourists, closed roads, destroyed park property and records, and took rare Galapagos tortoises as hostages. Several young tortoises died because of damage to their rearing area.

The name "Galapagos" conjures up images of remote equatorial islands; the giant tortoises, some of whom may have been alive when Charles Darwin was there, and other curious plants and animals.

As a young man in 1835, Darwin sailed to the Galapagos and collected specimens of plants and creatures that existed nowhere else on Earth. Scientists have been returning to the islands ever since to explore the life forms that inspired Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Since the late 20th century that archipelago has become Ecuador's most famous national park and a haven for ecotourism, but in recent years it has become an island of exploitation, ecoterrorism, and ecological genocide.

Located in the Pacific Ocean 600 miles west of Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands are a province that has prospered biologically and evolved in isolation, making them a world-famous living laboratory for the study of evolution.

But the peace of the islands' creatures has been shattered by the violence of the fishermen. Having surpassed in two months the annual quota of 50 tons of spiny lobster, the fishermen demanded that the fishery quota be abandoned. They also insisted that an unsustainable and reprehensible fishery for sharks be developed (to sell shark fins to the Asian market) within the Galapagos Marine Reserve. Such wasteful fisheries are opposed by fishery biologists because sharks are apex predators. They are at the top of the food chain, and when removed, the entire food web is compromised. In addition, many rare and unique species, including albatrosses, sea turtles and sea lions, are caught as bycatch of shark fishing.

The fishermen also demanded that charges against fishermen involved in previous violence against government property and personnel be dropped.

This is not the first case of violence by fishermen in the Galapagos. In 1997, when fishermen exceeded their fishery quotas for sea cucumbers (soft- bodied creatures related to sea stars, also known as beche-de-mer or trepang), they demanded that limits be abandoned, vandalized properties and threatened the lives of park personnel.

Make no mistake, these lucrative fisheries are not providing a meager existence for poor artisanal fishermen. Rather, they are making nearly 1,400 mainland fishermen, who moved onto the marine preserves of the national park after overexploiting the mainland, wealthy. We've been told that sea cucumber fishermen make more money selling their catch to Asian markets than cocaine dealers make in their trade on the mainland.

This is more than a regional squabble and much is at stake. The Galapagos Islands, designated an Ecuadorian National Park in 1936 and a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1978, is home to endemic plants and animals that survive in a fragile equilibrium, dependent for the most part on the richness of the sea around them.

Directly or indirectly killing these unique Galapagos species is like slashing a Rembrandt or destroying the Temple on the Mount. These islands and their creatures bring in about $80 million in income from tourism, a resource that is entirely sustainable. Fishery management is the responsibility of the national park, and it is a daunting task. The 51,000-square-mile reserve is second in size only to Australia's Great Barrier Reef Reserve. Yet there is only one patrol boat, expected to patrol an area equivalent to the California coastline, extending 70 miles out to sea.

After troops from the mainland arrived late in November, an uneasy truce has was called. As it has in the past, the Ecuadorian government caved in to the fishermen's demands and announced a 30-ton increase in the lobster quota, which had been set at 50 tons.

At this point, Galapagos fishermen (as in many places in the world) are consuming the capital, not just harvesting the interest, of their living endowment. We are fearful that the Ecuadorian government will cave in to every additional demand the fishermen will be making.

The California Academy of Sciences, sister institutions and other non- governmental organizations are considering a boycott by tourists of Galapagos and other Ecuadorian sites unless the government controls the current situation and recognizes the importance of managing its resources.

The fable of the goose with golden eggs is clearly understood in any language, and it signifies an avoidable tragedy in the Galapagos.

John E. McCosker and Terrence N. Gosliner are research scientists at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. They have visited the Galapagos on numerous occasions and are working with Ecuadorian scientists.