SANTA ELENA, ECUADOR – Bobbing up and down some 10 miles from the port of Santa Rosa, Ecuador, Victor Balón turns off his motorboat and cuts up bits of fish. His crewman, Viejo, uses the flesh to bait hooks on a fishing line, which he slides into long PVC tubes fastened to the side of the boat. Every 20 hooks or so, he attaches a smaller line connected to a cement weight. It takes a tedious 20 minutes to place all 247 hooks inside the tubes, but the procedure comes with huge payoffs, I’m assured.
Balón—or Flaco, as everyone calls him—throws the Minervita 2’s engine into gear, leaving a smack of jellyfish behind in the Pacific Ocean waves. Viejo tosses the first weight overboard and hooks come flying out, sinking immediately. He watches carefully and throws out weights at regular intervals. Two minutes and 38 seconds later, the entire 1,300-foot line has disappeared.
On this hot and thankfully overcast April morning, Flaco is driving slowly so I can observe; at full speed, the pair can set these hooks in under a minute. As it is, I hardly see the bait zip into the sea, and that’s precisely the point: The faster the hooks sink well beneath the surface, the less chance for critically endangered Waved Albatross and other seabirds to go after the food—and the lower the risk they’ll get caught in the line.
“That’s what we’re aiming for with this system: to improve the way we fish,” says biologist Giovanny Suárez Espín, who has joined us on the boat today for a demonstration of the bird-friendly fishing device. “Prevent the deaths of seabirds and make fishing easier.”
We don’t see any albatrosses. The giant seabirds usually forage farther offshore at this time of year, which is also where Flaco typically would seek out tuna, sea bass, rockfish, and swordfish. However, for my safety, Flaco doesn’t venture too far from the coast. On the open sea, he and other people fishing face threats themselves.
Each day hundreds of small boats just like the Minervita 2 fish from Santa Rosa, one of Ecuador’s largest artisanal fishing ports in one of the world’s most productive coastal fishing areas. Compared to commercial or industrial operations, these fishermen typically use relatively modest vessels and low-technology gear and pull in a smaller volume of catch. In Ecuador and Peru, tens of thousands of artisanal or small-scale fishers support their families this way.
It’s never been an easy or lucrative career. Many fishermen don’t finish high school so that they can provide for their families at a young age, and poverty is visible in the port, where boats run on old motors, and tape, string, and cables secure rusty gear. But now their work is getting harder. Overfishing and climate change are forcing fishermen to head farther offshore to pursue catch on grueling multiday trips. What’s more, organized crime has spiked along the coast as a growing number of gangs seek control of drug trafficking routes. Fishermen get caught in the crosshairs: In 2024, 230 disappeared and 60 were murdered at sea, according to the Federation of Artisanal Fishing Organizations of Ecuador.
Photo by Santiago Arcos
Kimberley Michelle Brown 