Our fight against ratrofishing

On 16 January 1986 I started working as a rural doctor. I woke up at sunrise and rushed out because I was going to be late for my first day of work. Oh surprise, when I arrived at the Pedro Figallo Hospital in Río Caribe (Sucre state), it was 6:15 am. I realised that day that the sun rises earlier in eastern Venezuela.

I worked there for two years, and I learned a lot from our people, beyond the east. Much of what I believed, they demolished, they guided me to work listening and obeying the people. Very wise, very loving, those people abandoned by the governments and only protected by God, as well as us, who worked in the Hospital. My heart and my appendix (I had appendicitis, I was operated on there) remained in that beautiful town. Perhaps I feel that I was born there for the second time..

Many times I attended to our fishermen, many times, in their complaints, in their illnesses and in their wounds. -Injured while working? Myrmation, explain to me!

Of course, the artisanal fishermen went fishing in their boats, they were rammed and shot at by the trawlers, and that's how they were shot..

They killed all the fish, all species and all sizes of fish, they devastated the sea floor. Theorists say that seventy percent of what is caught is thrown away, we saw on the beaches a pile of small dead fish (thrown away by the trawlers). From that time on, it was my definite commitment to fight against this..

All of Latin America and the Caribbean legally authorises the practice of trawling. The regulations state the distance from the coast at which it must be done. But there is no respect for the law, for biological diversity, nor for artisanal fishermen. Even in cartoon films, they show the trapping of inedible species, young individuals (which do not ensure reproduction by decimating the breeding population). It is no secret how bad, how deleterious this massive and unsustainable fishing practice is.

Years later we developed in environmental groups such as Grupo Ambientalistas de LUZ, AZUL Ambientalistas del Zulia, NATURAZUL, Amigos del Bosque, FAI and MANGLE. From these environmental fronts, we fought against the illegal fishing, with a lot of environmental education, talking to legislators, participating in the Constituent Assembly, participating in national and state environmental plans.

Nothing could be more pleasing when we heard from the then President Chávez, that there was an end to trace fishing in Venezuela: "Victory to the people! Victory to the environmental groups! We expressed it on the radio in our programmes and allied programmes. It was the triumph of good, it was the triumph of the homeland and of nature..

On 14 March 2009, that provision came into force. They started to say that a lot of fishermen were unemployed, but it was only a small part of the workforce that switched to traditional fishing..

Fish that had not been seen in the coastal zone for a long time appeared, and the biological diversity of the seabed appeared as well.

We congratulate ourselves and the artisanal fishermen. These are works of an environmental revolution, of which I feel I am a protagonist. I paid my debt to the fishermen of Rio Caribe and it was very pleasant. I still hope that there will be a global elimination of bottom fishing..

We will continue to fight.