Marine stocks threatened

LOS SANTOS. Agapito Gonzalez, an old subsistence fisherman from Los Santos, is finding it daily more difficult to feed his family on catches from the Pacific ocean.

Gonzalez said he used to catch around 200 pounds of fish a week. Now he is lucky to get 15 - which shows just how bad the problem of overfishing has become.

Gabino Acebendo, president of Panama’s Fishing Association, also recognizes that there has been a drastic reduction in fish numbers and agrees with Gonzalez that fish such as snapper (pargo) and sea-bass (corvine) are disappearing. He says fish catches are around 50 percent down on previous years.

Both he and Gonzalez blame the drag and drift nets of industrial fishing vessels for the reduced numbers of fish stock. Gonzalez also says that illegal fishing activities and pollution play a part. Fish have also been affected by the “el niño”, in which the warming of ocean waters provokes fish to move to cooler areas.

Panama’s Marine Resources Authority (ARAP), which is responsible for protecting the countryÁ´s fish stocks, agrees with him.

But help may be at hand. According to Gabriel Rosania, legal advisor in its intergral management and planning department, ARAP is looking to create a special management zone in Pocri, Tonosi, Pedasi and nearby areas in Los Santos where fish stocks and other biodiversity can be protected and encouraged to increase. ARAP has just finished a bidding process for collaborators to work on a $250,000 project to compile data to create a marine resources atlas about the current state of fish stocks and develop a management plan to use the remaining marine resources in a sustainable way.