KoraKorea – Cheap Tuna And Girls In Kiribatiff

Fishing and prostitution might be two of the oldest professions, but the exploitation of both is creating new vulnerabilities for Pacific islands as distant countries send more boats to fish there.

The deck of the Taiwanese fishing boat bustles with activity. At anchor a few kilometers off Tarawa, in Kiribati, tons of skipjack tuna are lifted from a refrigerated hold onto the sweltering deck for shipment to a ship moored beside it. Whistles blow, nets of shimmering fish are raised and swung across. The fish will go to canneries in Papua New Guinea and Taiwan.

But look closer and another small shipment is taking place. A girl is climbing down thick ropes from the ship onto the boat. Here she is known as a “korakorea” girl: a girl who spends time with fishermen.

The practice of young girls paddling out to foreign boats is nothing new; it is almost a cliché of Pacific history. European sailors were fond of dropping anchor in places such as Tahiti, knowing they would be warmly welcomed. The practice caused mutiny on the Bounty and much else to inspire romantic notions in Europe that the Pacific islands were an Eden of sorts.

Although it continues today, there is little romance and far more danger for the girls. AIDS plus the social and psychological consequences of girls as young as 12 being involved gives the fishing industry a dark side that is rarely contemplated when consumers open a tin of tuna.

For years, socially conscious consumers have checked their supermarket tins of tuna to see if it is “dolphin friendly”. But it may be time to ask whether your sandwich tuna is “Pacific islander friendly”.

Like dolphins, small Pacific nations are increasingly being caught in a net of deceit and swallowed by larger predators. There are growing social consequences as a result of a rapacious fishing industry worth an estimated $US2.7 billion ($3.6 billion) a year. More than half the world's tuna, about 2 million tons per year, comes from the Pacific region.

Scientists warn that some species such as bigeye and yellowfin are headed for the endangered list if fishing is not controlled immediately. Within three to five years, some stocks could be critically overfished.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says 71 to 78 per cent of world fish stocks are fully exploited, so responsible management of fishing worldwide is critical. The collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery in 1992 shows what can happen when overfishing is not addressed: the Canadian government ignored scientific warnings and stood by as catches fell from 233,000 tons (211,000 tons) to zero in two years.

The Pacific Ocean holds the world's last great fish supply. The European Union, after enforcing a moratorium on cod fishing in the Atlantic, recently signed bilateral deals with Pacific island states to fish in their waters.

Europe sources much of its tuna from the Pacific. The EU fleet joins China, Taiwan, Japan, Russia, the US, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and others who range far into the Pacific to harvest fish on an industrial scale.

For many smaller island states fish are the only real asset, especially in cases such as Kiribati, a nation of low-lying coral atolls with a small landmass but a huge exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of sea. Kiribati has a landmass of just 719 square kilometers of islands, yet its territory covers 3.5 million square kilometers, making it one of the world's largest maritime nations. To patrol this area, Kiribati has one boat - provided by the Australian Government through its Pacific Patrol Boats program.

Island nations are invariably getting ripped off on what is often their one and only asset. Greenpeace International, working on data from the South Pacific Commission in Noumea, estimates that the financial return from access fees and licenses back to Pacific states is just 5 per cent of the more than $US2 billion the fish is worth on the global market.

“It’s true we are not maximizing the benefits of our fishing industry,” says Roniti Teiwaki, a former minister of fisheries in Kiribati. “Our income each year [between $US20 million and $US40 million] has not changed much since independence in 1979 and we have no real way of monitoring how much fish gets taken out of our EEZ.”

Teiwaki says there is some frustration that Kiribati has not been able to add value to its fisheries by having an onshore cannery or more locals employed on foreign vessels.

“We have all these advisers who tell us it is not viable to have a cannery here because it needs too much fresh water to operate, which we don’t have. That may be true but we need to find ways to manage our resources better.”

“Personally I think we should be going back to pole-and-line fishing, which is more sustainable and creates more local employment. Or we could auction our fish rather than just sell off licenses.”

Some Pacific leaders have mooted the idea of establishing an OPEC-like arrangement among Pacific fishing nations to better control the price and supply of fish in the way OPEC does with oil. But Pacific nations are at a disadvantage, because they cannot patrol their vast seas and the fish are migratory. Many island states do not have the manpower, resources or economies of scale to maximize returns on fishing, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by big commercial fishing fleets.

The impact is also felt by local fishermen who rely on coastal waters to feed their families.

“The fish are getting smaller,” says Atera, an old fisherman who goes out most mornings and still makes his fishing lures by hand. “When I was growing up, we could fish in the lagoon here and there was always plenty of fish. Now I have to go kilometers out to sea to catch good size fish. And petrol is getting so expensive.”

Like many local fishermen and their wives who sell the day’s catch along the main road, Atera complains that when the big boats come into port, they offload a lot of by-catch - the rejected fish from their huge nets - onto the local market. This cheap fish, “korakorea fish”, sells for 90 cents a kilo and is undermining the local economy that many rely on.

The term “korakorea” was first coined to describe local girls who went aboard Korean fishing vessels, but is now used for girls going on board fishing boats from any country, as well as being slang for cheap fish.

Many do it because of poverty at home and the chance to earn money, clothes and fish. Some are pressured by their families. Others say it is so they can get “drinking money for their friends” and because the foreign fishermen treat them better than local men do.

There is no law against prostitution in Kiribati, which was highlighted recently when 80 girls were rounded up, brought before a local court and then released. Yet there is growing concern that Kiribati maybe breaching international conventions on child protection because many of the girls are only 14 or 15. UNICEF is preparing to release a damning document relating to underage prostitution in several Pacific countries, including Kiribati.

One woman involved in the trade, “Kathy”, says girls as young as 12 are involved. “I know about one 12-year-old girl who was taken out to a fishing boat by her aunty and she has disappeared. Her family is very worried since she has been missing now for four months.”

Kathy, 21, lives with her father, an unemployed former government worker, in a crowded settlement near the port of Betio, south Tarawa. She says there are many local girls involved in the trade and they all have different motivations.

Kathy says that even though there have been crackdowns by local authorities the girls are not scared of getting caught because “their family are supporting them”.

This is what makes prostitution in Kiribati and other Pacific islands a complex issue. For many Pacific cultures it is not a big deal: sex, “kastom” and fishing are intertwined, subject to taboos. Many islanders do not view such exchanges as “prostitution”. Fishing and sex have long been linked to traditions that were not necessarily bad - everything was shared within communities, and remote islands needed new blood.

A recent UNICEF document points out that: “In 1826 prostitutes were referred to as Nikiranroro, meaning those who had lost their virginity or had eloped. Whalers were much criticized and blamed for having increased prostitution in the islands … venereal disease was said to have been more widespread after whaling contacts.”

“In some outer islands of Kiribati there was a custom practiced where a girl could be taken to the king on first menstruation and families in return would receive a plot of land from the king.”

As president of the Kiribati National Council of Women, Mere Riwata agrees the korakorea issue is a complex one but believes that girls should be in school and better guided by their parents or guardians.

“It is an issue here because it is against our culture and tradition. In the olden days, at age 14 or 15, girls were kept in the home doing work that assured your future life as a woman and they were very restricted in their night-time outings. But now Kiribati is in the swell of globalization and the issue of korakorea … well, that's how things happen now.”

Modernity, a cash economy and the loss of tradition have created new vulnerabilities for Pacific coastal communities. Riwata believes there is a “dangerous cycle” linking alcohol abuse, violence, sexual abuse and disease that is afflicting many Pacific nations.

Communities that once shared everything now have a new rich-poor divide and AIDS is an ever-present danger. Kiribati has a population of 92,000. The AIDS clinic at Tarawa General Hospital has 43 confirmed AIDS cases, and 26 patients have already died.

“I’d say almost all the cases of AIDS here are related to the fishing industry,” says one of the nurses testing blood samples. “It is coming from both foreign fishermen and our own sailors returning home.”

David Yee Ting, Kiribati's Permanent Secretary for Fisheries, says that the Government is getting on top of the situation. “Our new Police Commissioner has been enforcing the laws to stop girls - and those who help them - go out to the boats.”

He confirms that the situation got so bad that for a period in 2003, Kiribati banned all Korean fishing boats from entering its ports after reports in the Korean Herald that 30 to 50 girls, mostly under age, were servicing the Korean fishermen.

Asked whether he thought Kiribati was also getting ripped off on its core asset, fisheries, Ting says: “That’s a bit harsh, but yes, we could be getting a better return. We only have one patrol boat and we don’t have many trained fisheries officers who can be stationed on boats to monitor catches.”

“But as Pacific states come together through regional bodies like the FFA [Forum Fisheries Authority, based in the Solomon Islands] and the WCPFC [Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, based in the Marshall Islands], I believe we will have more collective power to get a better deal on our fish resources."

Ting is upbeat about the recent deal signed between the EU and Kiribati, believing the EU will help develop the local industry with more employment and training. Other observers are not so sanguine.”

Captain David Lucas, manager of Solander Pacific Fiji, says: “I don’t think we should have vessels from 5000 miles (8000 kilometers) away fishing here. Why are they fishing here? Because they have stuffed their own region and now they are coming down here to do it.”

Source: Pacific Island Press