The Angry Sea
After 8 years of exclusion from the Moroccan fishing grounds the captain of the trawler Nuevo Pepita Aurora decided, at the beginning of September, that it was time to test those once upon a time forbidden waters again. From Barbate harbour (Cadiz) he left the rest of the fleet to trawl in home waters and headed for the re-opened North African zone.
The Nuevo Pepita Aurora never came back. She turned turtle in the Straits in a 70 kms hour wind just 14 kms from the Spanish coast. Of the crew of 16 only 8 survived. José Crespo, one of the survivors recalls shouting at the captain to close the bow which was wrongly left wide open. In that kind of wind and with monstrous waves one has to have the IQ of plankton to leave any aperture open on a vessel. Mind you, some of you might remember the tragedy of the cross Channel ferry in the 80´s that turned on its side because the prow where the car loading ramp was situated was left open. The crew responsible for operating the ramp and securing the hatch just after leaving berth were conveniently having their usual indispensable mug of tea around the corner, letting the sea free to do what it does best: teach some careless humans a tragic lesson.
Also, on the Pepita, the life jackets were stuck behind and underneath bunks where they were virtually impossible to reach.
It reminds me of how many times I have screamed at my staff not to block the fire exit of this or that hotel with buckets, mops, piled-up gallons of cleaning fluids (most of them inflammable), sacks of rubbish (ditto), gardening tools (try to run for safety in a panic and meeting a rake on the way; it might look funny on a black and white Charlie Chaplin’s but it is coronary material in stark reality). I even arrived at a hotel in Scotland where the fire exit had the kind of downwards push bars but they were chained up together and secured with a padlock. When I asked for the key nobody knew where it was. It was raining and I noticed that rain water was pouring through one of the electric plugs in the kitchen. As soon as the owners left me in charge I called a handyman, had the chain cut off and the kitchen plugs checked up. I stuck it there for 2 years. It was too dangerous a place. The owners (they could have fallen off a lorry loaded with turnips) went bankrupt I am glad to say. They deserved it. The hotel was bought from the creditors by the local very successful delicatessen. Funny enough it caught fire during a storm 6 months after the change of ownership and the brothers who owned the deli knocked what was left of the burnt out hotel down and built a block of 40 luxury apartments…Overlooking the Clyde.
As usual it always comes down to money. The captain of the Pepita probably thought that the Atlantic waters would yield a bigger catch than the local coastal grounds. He may also have calculated that owed to the proverbial sit back attitude of the Moroccans spending their life drinking that disgusting green tea at the terrace of filthy cafés the Atlantic was less depleted of fish than the local polluted waters. He may have had a valid point here. It is ironical that so many illegal immigrants from Morocco land on our shores in anything that floats; many of them never touch land and drown “like stones thrown into the sea” as one of the survivor of the latest attempt to reach a beach on one of the Canary Islands said. In the meantime Spanish farmers are busy buying land on that rich strip between the Atlantic and the Atlas mountains . They say that the soil is rich, gets the rain from the Atlantic and the melted snows from the Atlas in the spring. And it is cheap. Very cheap. So why don’t the Moroccans till their land or go fishing instead of seeking the promised land in Spain? The grass is not greener in especially in the South. It has got that lovely rusty colour that shimmers in the heat and is the perfect kindling starter for the numerous devastating bush fires that plague us each summer.
Fishermen like farmers are pushed to very tight corners by the giant supermarkets that in turn crawl to their drooling shareholders by satisfying the ever increasing public demand for exotic produce or tortured vegetables and meat items. Once upon a time big was beautiful. Now small is best. Size zero does not only apply to models and stupid little girls but to vegetables as well. Tiny aubergines, cerise tomatoes, baby courgettes, stunted pathetic leeks, baby chicken, rabbits that did not have time to taste fresh grass are the flavour of the era. We are at the bonsai and topiary stage of consumers foodstuff. Show some customers an honest large potato with its skin on, washed and oiled, ready to be baked in a hot conventional oven and you would have to call the emergency services for apoplexy.
Considering that the supermarkets make an average of 1300% profit on the produce bought for a pittance from the farmers and fishermen it is no wonder that the producing industries take chances in the process.
The captain of the Pepita probably thought that trawling down that Atlantic coast would bring a favourable catch of those pathetic baby cods so dear to the Spaniards. In my catering days a cod weighed at least 5 kilos. Once cleaned, boned out and filleted you were left with more or less 4 kilos of boneless meat to be cut in steaks. I used to roll each steak, weighing approx 200 Gms, in coarsely ground pepper/coriander and with a dribble of melted butter, I used to grill it under a fierce heat. A quarter of lemon and a couple of new potatoes was all it needed to make a majestic meal.
Try to do that with those miserable baby cods. Each one weighs about 100 Gms and you need at least 4 of them to taste anything at all. The head has got to come off, then the bones. It is fiddly business. If you have any strength left you might get an inkling that this bonsai came from the sea.
The Mediterranean has been polluted by the sewers of tourism and depleted of any worthy seafood life by overfishing without discrimination. The Fisheries authorities who should exercise strict control are like albinos in the trees picking at banjos.
No wonder we have a proliferation of jellyfish around our coast. Those creatures are normally eaten by healthy fishes and their numbers are naturally regulated. No fishes anymore? The jellyfish have no predators. They multiply happily without hindrance.
The fact that the Spanish government and the Tourist Board, without any mandate from anyone, have ordered 18 tons of jellyfish to be fished out of the Med and dumped to die will not help. The very few fishes left in that polluted playground of the masses will have little to survive on.
Like the Sahara that was once a luxuriant forest the Med will become a barren salt lake.
The sea has got all the rights to be angry.
