“I’ve made a living by killing creatures for so many years, now I want them to live,” says Ercüment Altınsoy, an experienced fisher of many years who’s talking to us from the houseboat he shares with his wife Semra in Gökova. Those are difficult words for a fisherman to say, and Ercüment has witnessed the decline of fish and fishery in Gökova over many years. “I used to say that Gökova would never run out of fish, and it did. Excessive fishing and illegal fishing has been its downfall.” These words do not only refer to Gökova but sum up the situation on all our shores. And not just our shores, either — the same problem is faced by the whole Mediterranean and all the world’s oceans. Overfishing is by far the biggest contemporary threat to the world’s seas. Knowing this, Ercüment Altınsoy was one of our most ardent supporters as we worked towards declaring “No Fishing Zones” in Gökova in 2010. Other well-executed examples of the scheme showed us that nofishing zones led to a significant increase in fish populations within the first three years as long as they were well-protected. Within a decade, larger fish at the top of the food chain (such as the dusky grouper and white grouper) reach adult sizes and the preserved area approaches an almost-untouched state. Since we don’t have any historical evidence regarding how the Mediterranean looked in the earliest stages of humanity, we don’t quite know what “untouched" might signify. Were there a lot of large sharks, like one sees around the reefs in the ocean? What were the number of Mediterranean Monk Seals, which are currently the largest link in the food chain? What we know for certain is that when the population of large fish species increases, this means the system is working as it should. The best examples in the Mediterranean were all in Spain and France, and there were no examples we could refer to in the Eastern Mediterranean. Would the example we were trying to set in Gökova succeed? The “Biodiversity Convention Agreement,” which Turkey had also signed, set a target in the early 2000s that by 2010 20% of the world’s seas would be marine protected areas. In 2010, this target was revised to aim for 2020 instead. Currently the amount of marine protected areas in the Mediterranean is fewer than 1%. Globally, it is not even 1%, despite President Obama of the United States declaring the largest marine protected area in the world (490.000 sq. kilometers) in the Pacific Ocean on September 24, 2014.
And who would protect the No Fishing Zones in Gökova? Coastguard boats, who are responsible for marine security all around Turkey. However, fishing-related surveillance is not included in the coastguard’s list of priorities, and it’s naturally understandable. The two most important duties of the coastguard is to prevent hundreds of migrants every day from setting out to sea and trying to reach European borders, and to regulate and control sea traffic for safe journeys. In European Union countries, the regulation and control of fishing-related issues is done by teams created specifically by the “Marine Protection Area Management”. Our equivalent is the General Directorate for Protection of Natural Assets under the Ministry of Environment Urbanization and Cliamte Change. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent department to protect marine areas on the local level. Furthermore, when the Ministry for the Environment was separated from the Ministry of Agricultura and Forestry to which it was adjacent and merged with the Ministry of Environment Urbanization and Climate Change instead, the “Special Environment Protected Agency,” which was responsible for all of Turkey’s protected areas, was shut down and its powers transferred to the newly merged ministry. As things stand, the management and regulation of fishing activities is within the purview of the Department of Aquaculture under the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Husbandry, as set out in Law 1380 Concerning Aquaculture which was passed in 1971. Sadly, this department lacks the infrastructure and wherewithal to conduct inspections at sea. Existing penalties for illegal fishing are far from prohibitive; coastguard boats need to spend thousands of lira on the fuel to get them to the scene of crime only to issue the illegal fisher with a 100 lira ticket, which decreases the efficiency of protective measures. A lack of efficient protective measures after no fishing zones were declared in Gökova in 2010 was a great disappointment for local fishers. As the Mediterranean Conservation Society, we launched a project called the “Marine Rangers” scheme in Gökova Bay in 2012 with candidates we selected from among the local fishers and a fleet of speedboats. Based on our constitutional right and responsibility to inform the authorities on any illegal activities observed, the marine rangers document illegal activities with photos and began to inform the Coastguard Command located in Ören. Thanks to the support and the advice of the coastguard, the system soon began to bear fruit and the marine ranger’s patrols became a very effective deterrent, as well as a means of documenting illegal activities and informing visitors to the area on the features of the no fishing zones. İskender Demirel, a marine ranger from the Karacasöğüt neighbourhood says that “it is a wonderful duty to protect areas where I fished for many years, and to help increase the population of fish to an extent I’ve never seen before. İskender begins his duty at 5:30 every morning. He patrols Değirmen Bükü and the surrounding area, as well as handing out leaflets about the protected areas in Gökova to visiting boats that are very frequent during the summer months. He says, “Many boat owners this year began to call me and report illegal activities; they often warn those who are unaware that it is illegal to fish here.” The positive results of these efforts garner everyone’s interest and support. The effective protection of the area led to a swift increase in the fish population of the no fishing zone. In a 2013 meeting held to discuss the state of No Fishing Zones, the largest fishery cooperative in the region Akyaka, stated that since NFZs were implemented in 2010, their income had increased 53%. This is not only due to the increased fish population in the area, but also due to part time fishers (those who have an income in addition to fishing) quitting fishing because they do not want to sail out to the fishing permitted zone, and thus the existing stock being caught only by those who depended on fishing as a primary source of income. This showed that no fishing zones had benefits not encountered in fishing management. The “Marine Rangers” scheme by the MCS won the Whitley Prize, known as the “Green Oscar” of the world, in 2013, and the “United Nations Equator Prize” in 2014. In 2014, the MCS’s monitoring activities showed that at Değirmen Bükü, the largest of the NFZs, the fish population had increased sevenfold compared to non-protected areas (Graph 1). What’s even more heartening is that each year larger populations of the dusky grouper and white grouper are observed. This means that as long as effective protection continues, we’re one step closer to the ideal. Associate professor Vahdet Ünal from the faculty of Aquaculture at Ege University says that they’re trying to create an example that is “successful, beautiful, and repeatable.” Vahdet Ünal is also one of the founders of the Mediterranean Conservation Society, and he is one of the foremost researchers in the field. He states that “there is a lot the ministry can do, but opportunities keep slipping. Fishing within the Special Environmental Protected Areas must also be subject to special measures. An exemplary management model for sustainable fishing at Gökova must be created.” Vahdet Ünal claims that the General Directorate of Aquaculture must be more actively involved and genuine in its efforts. The protection and monitoring that the government must provide is currently being provided by the MCS. And for how long? How long would an NGO be able to pay costs that would only be laughable in the grand scheme of the state budget? When the project began, the MCS could find three years of funding for the marine rangers program thanks to a charity called Fauna Flora International. This period will come to an end at the end of 2015. This three year long successful scheme must either be supported by the government when it comes to an end, or the relevant authority must take on the marine ranger scheme as one of its own projects. Three years of toil and all the efforts that came before it must not go to waste, and the Turkish government must show that it is willing to protect its seas and serious about it.
The Gökova Bay and the Datça Peninsula hold a special place in Turkey when it comes to the socio-economic effects of fishing. There are approximately 120 fisherwomen in the region. Most fisherwomen work alongside their husbands, while some sail out on their own. The Mediterranean Conservation Society reached out to every single fisherwomen to discover their problems and expectations. The “Fisherwomen of the Aegean” project brought together more than 70 women and educated them on a range of topics from sustainable fishing to women’s rights to micro loans. The project manager is Dr. Huriye Göncüoğlu from the Aquaculture Faculty at the Ege University; she is also a member of the MCS’s board of directors. She states that “bringing together so many fisherwomen in a sector dominated by their husbands was one of the hardest tasks we’ve accomplished.” The project was financed by the UN’s small grants program, and all of the women who participated in it were given equipment support, new clothes, a commemorative plaque, and a gold coin. Fisherwomen aren’t even included in aquaculture data collected by the Turkish Statistics Institution (TÜİK); and despite being reticent at the beginning of the meeting, later they were all able to voice their concerns and expectations. They were able to feel privileged because of being women for the first time. The awareness and support of fisherwomen might be even more important than fishermen for sustainable fishing. Memduha Dinç, one of the fisherwomen in Bozburun, has a special story. For years she has been going out to sea on her own. The day she found a carer for her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and her father, she set sail alone. “When I was a child, the fishing net my father wove from the silk of the silkworms that my mother cultivated on mulberry trees was the first fishing net in Bozburun,” she says, “Back then we would cast 100 meters of fishing net, come up with 100 kilos of fish, and spend the whole day cleaning fish.” We set sail at 6 AM together to collect the fishing net she had cast the night before. She reels in 200 meters of fishing net deftly and carefully. A total of 4 kilo of fish has been caught, and none from the species Memduha considers worthwhile. “We wouldn’t even eat these,” she says, “fish and fishing are done for here.” Memduha’s story is enough to show what the Mediterranean used to be and what it is now. Hundreds of kilo of fish in the past compared to a mere four kilos of useless fish now show us once again the extent of the fishing industry’s mismanagement.
One of the vital features of sustainable fishing is the healthy nature of fishing areas. For years, every day hundreds of kilometres of fishing net are cast out and then unable to be pulled up due to getting stuck on the seabed, or lost. These nets continue to catch fish underwater, and are dubbed “ghost nets.” When reefs become covered with this type of net, many fishing areas decrease in capacity, and by passively continuing to catch fish, the nets destroy species. In 2013, the Mediterranean Conservation Society collaborated with the Gökova Yachting Club and organised a cleanup project for ghost nets whose locations were previously determined; this was again supported by the UN Small Grants program. The team, led by Associate Professor Adnan Ayaz from the Faculty of Aquaculture at Çanakkale 18 Mart University, cleaned up nets and other fishing equipment reported as lost by fishers and which they had previously located. There are still dozens of kilometers of torn fishing line underwater. They might not be as harmful as fishing nets, but the reefs get covered by non-degradable plastic pollution. *Increased seawater temperatures in the Eastern Mediterranean allow invasive species from the Red Sea which travel through the Suez canal and inside ships’ ballast tanks to survive the winter and multiply. The puffer fish (Lagocephalus sceleratus), which was observed for the first time in the Mediterranean at Gökova Bay in 2003, has multiplied at an unbelievable rate on the Eastern Mediterranean shores where it has found itself a viable habitat, and exerts an enormous amount of pressure on local species. Its sharp teeth harm fishing equipment to such an extent that the greatest problem faced by traditional fishing has become the puffer fish. The deadly venom tetrodotoxin (TTX), contained within the fish’s organs, creates serious health risks the moment the fish is consumed, therefore allowing the species to triumph over other fish without any predators, not even humans. In 2013, the MCS launched a detailed project to study the harmful effects of the puffer fish on fishing on Turkey’s coasts, and to establish the seasonal and regional distribution of the TTX contained by the fish. Supported by the UNDP GEF Small Grants Program, the project revealed that on the coasts where it was prevalent, the puffer fish caused approximately 20.810.541 TRY of damage to the fishing industry annually. Assistant Professor İnci Tüney from the Department of Hydrobiology at the Faculty of Science at Ege University, who managed the project and is a member of the MCS’s board of directors, states that they have found TTX in every puffer fish tissue across all seasons, and that the species must not be eaten under any circumstances. TTX is valuable for the medicine sector, and İnci Tüney says that they’ve also researched the quantity of the poison contained by the fish; if it can be marketed, puffer fish fishing can be a new and profitable branch of the fishing sector on our southern shoes. This would not only create fishing pressure on this brazen invasive species, but also contribute to the economy.
Today, a handful of people are working tirelessly to protect Gökova Bay, even if it’s on a small scale, to show everyone that we can create an efficient method of conservation and fishing. The rest is up to the authorities’ and the general public’s interest and responsibility. Will the Ministry of Environment Urbanization and Climate Change, or the Ministry of Forest and Agriculture, want an NGO trying to carry the torch to pass it over to them? Associate Professor Vahdet Ünal from Ege University states that fishing related problems at SEPAs are not that difficult to solve, and that sustainable fishing can be ensured by the cooperation of the General Directorate of Fishing and Aquaculture and the General Directorate for Protection of Natural Assets. However, this requires a culture of working with stakeholders, genuine interest, determination, and willingness.
Author and photos: Zafer Kızılkaya, MCS
Source: Magma Magazine, 2015