Johnny
Blades, RNZ Pacific senior
journalist
There is outrage in Papua New Guinea over
signs that a Filipino tuna fishing company is catching
dolphins against the law.
This follows the emergence
of a four-minute video from PNG’s Manus Province showing the
crew on a purse seine vessel, the Red Robin 88
(previously Discovery 101), hauling in dead dolphins
from its nets.
Manus local Jonathan Semin told RNZ
Pacific that his community is extremely concerned about what
they have seen in the video.
“There were many
dolphins, which I was very angry about, when I saw that
there were dead dolphins in the net.
“They are killing
our dolphins. We should be protecting them. Why are these
fishing boats coming into our sea and doing this to our
dolphins and our sea species?”
The Red Robin 88
is a locally based foreign fishing vessel owned by Frabelle
Fishing Corporation, a Philippine-owned company
long-established in PNG waters.
PNG’s Minister for
Fisheries and Marine Resources Jelta Wong told RNZ Pacific
he was expecting a report on the incident from the National
Fisheries Authority’s Surveillance Unit.
“It’s
illegal. I am investigating this. They will be penalised
heavily, I’m sifting through the evidence,” Wong
said.
A large number of dolphins live in the sea
around Manus Province, where they are highly valued by local
communities as sentient beings who help people lost at sea
find their way home.
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“We love them, they are part of
us,” Semin said.
“We like to look after various
species like dolphin and others sea animals like that, so
that will make our people very, very angry when they come
across this video.
He said that as well as showing the
vessel catching huge amounts of tuna, the footage of
foreigners pulling out dead dolphins from the net was
offensive to PNG people.
“That’s what makes me very
cross, because we love dolphins, we preserve dolphins in our
areas, and when this fishing boat come and act like this,
this is not good, this is not right at
all.”
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