Earlier this year I got to know a slightly-built impressive young man, an addiction counsellor, whose kindness to my beautiful, talented, dying younger alcoholic sister was something incredible to witness. In the times we would sit together, he told me he was studying for his Master’s degree in Addiction Counselling but that, a little more than a decade ago, he had worked on a fishing trawler –

perhaps the toughest job in the world.

 

Trawling the high seas

is a place where human life is cheap..

and marine life worthless..

unless it can be sold.

 

By Louise van der Merwe

Continued ... next page  ---- >

 

A day later, also in The New York Times, we are told of the work of the international marine conservation NGO Sea Shepherd against illegal fishing in Antarctica. According to the article,

Sea Shepherd had boarded a vessel that was pulling nets on board that had been underwater for so long that the catch had already started to decompose.

On 27th July, the New York Times carried a story about the tragic lives of young men trapped in slave-like conditions on board Thai fishing vessels that cast their nets for the livestock and pet food industries.

 

(Pic on left  - see full article in New York Times)

When I read the New York Times articles, I telephoned him and asked if he would give us more insight into the South African trawling industry. Here is Danie’s* story: (*not his real name)