THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: Monday, December 18, 1995 TAG: 9512170159 SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL SERIES: Dividing the Waters SOURCE: By LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER DATELINE: PUNTARENAS, COSTA RICA LENGTH: Long : 259 lines
Phil Cahill fled eight years ago.
Frustrated by a flood of commercial fishing laws, tired of catching more flack than fish, the former Hampton Roads resident untangled himself from the net of American bureaucracy and escaped to freer waters.
In this Pacific coast port in Costa Rica, Cahill set up a seafood factory, buying tuna, snapper, shrimp, blue marlin and sailfish from local watermen. Then, he purchased six bigger boats and formed his own fleet. Last year, Cahill sold 2 million pounds of Costa Rican fish, bringing his company, Luna de Oro (Moon of Gold), more than $6 million.
Nearly all that seafood was shipped to the United States. Most went to Boston, New York and Miami on special overnight air cargo flights. Some was trucked from these cities to Hampton Roads, ending up at Ocean to Ocean seafood in Virginia Beach. Even the Red Lobster restaurant chain imports its snapper from Cahill's Costa Rican company.
Foreign fish are filling the markets across the United States. As pollution and high-tech fishing take their toll on fish populations - and state and federal officials impose stricter controls about how much fish can be caught when and where along American coasts - the domestic seafood supply is becoming uncertain.
Scores of Hampton Roads restaurants already serve foreign fish instead of seafood from the Atlantic coast. Fish houses from Newport News to Hatteras Village are importing up to half of what they sell. And experts estimate that about 82 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is now shipped from overseas.
``When the U.S. government eliminates or even limits production of a product that's consumed in its country, the seafood dealers have to supplement their supply from somewhere else,'' Cahill said from Luna de Oro's wood-paneled office, as rubber-booted watermen stacked yellowfin tuna on the blood-smeared docks below.
``All these supermarkets and health studies have been pushing people to eat fish for all these years, they have to keep their seafood shelves stocked now. But the northern U.S. waters are being fished out. And the rest of the coast is being regulated to death.''
There are 30 to 40 ex-patriate Americans in Costa Rica's commercial fishing industry, said Cahill, who speaks a little Spanish but still follows Atlantic Coast Conference football on overseas cable TV.
``Labor is cheap here: from $1.75 to $2 an hour. At least 90 percent of our catch, we ship to the States. The price there sets the market for us.
``I'm trying to expand my northeastern U.S. market this year because I know there'll be an even greater need for imported seafood soon,'' Cahill said, smiling. ``I went into business with that intent.''
By not allowing American watermen to catch what they can off their own coasts, governmental regulators are creating a demand for imported fish - and, in the process, selling their own fishermen down the river, say critics of such regulation. Meanwhile, as the United States enforces volumes of laws about commercial fishing in its waters, few regulations govern imported seafood.
Species whose stocks are being protected along the East Coast are being caught by the tractor-trailer loads in Central America - and shipped right back to United States restaurants.
``Our own country ran us out of the water and never even cared,'' said Timmy Daniels, a Wanchese, N.C., native who managed his family's Hampton Roads seafood shipping company for more than a decade - and who now owns a scallop boat based in Argentina.
``We end up importing from down there anyway,'' Daniels said. ``So why not set up shop in South America?''
In 1981, Walter ``Skip'' Baker was running a plantation outside Quepos, Costa Rica, for the American-owned United Fruit Co., producer of Chiquita bananas. His mother came to visit and asked why there weren't any boats in the ocean off that Pacific port. Baker didn't know.
The following year, Baker met another American, Bob Miles, who founded Martec Industries to build big boats. The two began selling seafood in 1984 to supplement their boat-building income. Martec was the third seafood-exporting company in Costa Rica - the first on the Pacific coast in this country the size of West Virginia.
Today, Baker and Miles employ 55 Quepos natives, own nine commercial boats and buy fish from 40 other local watermen. Their burgeoning business ships more than 100,000 pounds of processed fish to the United States each month.
``Until we got here, Costa Ricans didn't really even eat fish, much less export them,'' Baker said as plastic carts filled with gutted thresher shark rolled past his packing house. ``Costa Ricans are landlubbers. They're not very daring or entreprenureal. We established a market for shark, mahi and marlin from here - selling almost all of it to the United States.
``We train all our employees and teach them how to fish. They start out in day skiffs, and work their way up. The bigger, 45-foot boats go out 400 miles or more each trip. It's very hard fishing,'' said Baker. ``And you can't afford to do it here like they do in the States.''
Americans own three of Costa Rica's six major seafood exporters. Although the Central American country is bordered by the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, residents say they did not sell any fish internationally until United States dealers arrived in the early 1980s. Today, about 14,000 Costa Ricans work in the seafood industry.
Fish are fast approaching coffee and bananas as the country's most valuable export.
And instead of placing restrictions on commercial fishing - such as has happened in the United States - the Costa Rican government, like those of other Latin American nations, actually pays seafood dealers a 7.5 percent export incentive to encourage them to bring dollars into the depressed economy of this democracy. For shipping $5,000 worth of fish to the States, for example, seafood exporters receive $375 from the Costa Rican government.
``Before 10 or 15 years ago, there was no market to sell fish overseas. The gringos opened a new export for us,'' said Mario Gonzales, a Costa Rican who manages Cahill's Puntarenas fish processing plant.
``It all changed when the Gringos came over,'' Gonzales said, referring to Americans in the local slang. ``They gave us a lot of jobs and regular work for our people. They sponsor soccer teams for our towns. And they showed us to sell fish we thought you couldn't eat.''
Although most Costa Rican watermen agree that American fleets have increased the natives' abilities to catch fish and earn money, some also worry about the overall effects foreign fishermen might have on the future.
``The Chinese came over here to teach our fishermen to fish better. But once they saw how many fish we had, they stopped teaching and began building their own big boats,'' said Jimmy Arias, a native Costa Rican and chief buyer for Exportador-Frumar seafood company in the town of Allejuela.
``I think that's bad,'' said Arias, who taught himself English and fluently handles long-distance export orders when he's not inspecting tuna. ``They're taking our resource. But our marine patrol only has two or three boats to enforce rules around the whole country. What can you do?''
Fight for the fish, say leaders of some commercial fishing countries.
Russia, for example, has deployed warships to dissuade Polish, South Korean, Japanese and Chinese trawl boats from fishing in international waters Moscow claims to manage. Canadian marine patrolmen arrested two New Bedford, Mass. fishing boats in the Altantic last year. And Spanish and Canadian ships have skirmished over the rights to harvest catches in northern fishing grounds.
``Tuna, marlin, sailfish - these species travel all around the world,'' Arias said, naming three of his company's most profitable species. ``Our government - or any government - can't say we can't catch these fish. If we don't catch them, the Nicaraguans will, or someone else instead.
``Then, only we lose,'' Arias said simply. ``The fish still die either way.''
The Third World equation for undercutting American seafood producers has depended in the past on cheap labor and bare bones equipment. But as the balance of competition shifts to these Third World countries even their methods are changing, with high tech trawlers enabling the fleets to take even greater advantage of unrestricted waters.
When Skip Baker began managing Martec 10 years ago, the Costa Rican company's fishing fleet had no hydraulic engines, no mechanical reels for hauling long lines, no curved fishing hooks to snap onto the monofilament. Today, custom-built boats are equipped with modern engines, mechanized winches and high-tech hooks. Captains rely on Global Positioning Satellite systems to navigate the Pacific waters. They call in their catch reports on marine radios.
Until September, they had lacked one electronic advantage - temperature-finding satellite systems to help locate thermal currents and pinpoint fish flocks.
Not all fishing operations in Costa Rica, however, have evolved to Martec's state. But those that haven't still manage to maintain a competitive advantage over U.S. operations. Commercial fishing licenses in Costa Rica, for example, are free and only available to residents of the country. Companies pay their fishermen, cutters and truck drivers less than half of the United States' minimum wage.
Supplies for commercial fishing boats sometimes are more expensive. Baker estimates that by the time he imports bait, tackle and other boat equipment from the United States and pays air freight and shipping costs to send the seafood overseas, some of his costs are as much as 30 percent higher than those of American watermen. His fish, however, have to be the same price or cheaper to sell. So wages and out-of-the-boat fish prices are kept low.
``A tuna that fetches $3 on an American dock, we can only pay $2 for here in Quepos, because it has to cost the same or less when it reaches the United States markets,'' Baker said. ``We can't afford to pay our fishermen as much as they make in America.''
At least two Americans who have tried to operate commercial vessels for Martec have gone home broke, Baker said, because they attempted to reproduce United States fishing standards in the foreign fleets.
``The Gringos' operating costs are at least twice as high as ours are,'' Baker said. ``This is not a technical world. They come in here with all their high-tech gear and expensive overhead, and they just can't make it.''
For the operations that are successful, the future appears to hold even greater promise - at the expense of American commercial fishermen.
``It's hard to get a good price for local yellowfin tuna any more because of all the foreign fish,'' says Charlie Fearing, owner of Top Fin Seafood Co. on the North Carolina Outer Banks.
``Our fishermen get $2.75 a pound for yellowfin. We sell it for $5.50 filleted wholesale, $5.95 for the restaurants. You can buy Trinidad stuff for $2.50 filleted a pound. But those fish cutters work for three cents an hour there.
``Anything imported should be tarriffed,'' said Fearing. ``There should be taxes on foreign fish just like there are on foreign automobiles.''
``They ain't doing nothing to enforce the world market,'' agreed Wanchese Fish Co. President Joey Daniels, who has been a commissioner on North Carolina's Marine Fisheries Commission for two years. ``We shouldn't be allowed to import any species to this country that's regulated in our waters already. They shouldn't allow them to import stuff cheaper than what we can do.''
If that happened, Peter Levine might have to change the way he does business. Levine began his New Bedford, Mass., fish house five years ago, selling only species caught by American boats, off the Atlantic coast. Today, Tasty Seafood Co. imports 97 percent of its fish from overseas.
Levine annually buys $4 million of tuna, marlin and mahi from Arias's Costa Rican company Exportador-Frumar. He ships those fillets to Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver - and to Fearing's Top Fin Seafood in Wanchese.
``With the American commercial fishing industry the way it is now, we felt it was best to do all of our business with South American companies,'' Levine said, uttering the prophecy local watermen fear most.
``Some of the imported stuff is better than the domestic. It comes from warmer waters, so the meat is a redder color. And it's a lot easier to count on - and often cheaper, too.''
For the past six years, Curt Waters has been working on commercial fishing boats off Alaska for a fleet owned by Tyson Food Co. This fall, he moved to Costa Rica to find ``a little sunshine and a lot freer fishing.'' Waters plans to run one of the newer high-tech boats for Martec.
He brought his wife, 7-year-old daughter, two dogs and a $10,000 computer to Quepos.
``Guys like me are looking all over the world for a place just to make a living,'' said Waters, 32, as he looked over his new 45-foot vessel that pulls about 30 miles of long-line strungwith 700 hooks.
``It's not that I don't want to be regulated at all. It's just that the United States needs to regulate its fishing industry with more intelligence,'' Waters said.
``For me, there's the promise of working around a lot less politics here than what I had to deal with in Alaska.''
The satellite system with which Water's computer connects will use infra-red imaging to map water temperatures at the ocean's surface - and to locate fish schools within warmer temperatures. His is the first boat in Costa Rica that will utilize such technology.
Baker, however, is skeptical that his Quepos company needs such high-tech help. He has even talked Waters out of buying several safety items the Alaskan planned to provide for his crew. Instead of having a blood-pressure kit, eye wash station and myriad medicines on board, Baker told Waters he only needed ``the minimum first-aid stuff and one pill the locals use for everything.''
``The two Americans here before you lost $1,000 a month on their big boats,'' Baker warned his newest captain. ``There's a big temptation to do it big here, too. But you've got to keep it to the scale of this place. If Costa Rica started letting United States boats in, we'd all be cleaned out in a minute.'' MEMO: Tomorrow: If commercial fishermen feel beleaguered by regulation,
depleted fish stocks and Third World competition, they find themselves
also fighting sporting enthusiasts for resources.
Related story about New York's Fulton Fish Market on page A7. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by DREW C. WILSON, The Virginian-Pilot
Dockworkers at Martec, an American-owned fish exporter operating out
of Quepos, Costa Rica, push a cart full of white and blue marlin
caught by the company's offshore fleet.
Color map
Color photos by DREW C. WILSON, The Virginian-Pilot
Finding the Fish: Costa Rican fishermen take a break from pulling
their nets to have an impromptu conference outside the fishing port
of Quepos.
Unloading the Catch: In the iced hold of a Costa Rican fishing
vessel, David Amador of Quepos lifts a large bull dolphin, or mahi
mahi.
Processing: At Martec, an American owned seafood exporter in Quepos,
workers prepare blacktip shark for export to the United States.
On the Way: As Costa Rican airport personnel watch, a fish inspector
checks boxes of fish destined for the United States.
KEYWORDS: COMMERCIAL FISHING by CNB