Ocean wealth

There’s a dependency on it, from its power and immensity. There is a thing there that does something in the stomach. There’s also a very strong connection between the ocean
and colonization. Because, you see Portugal has a very long coast. The ocean is a very big resource.

M.M. On the small Greek island where I often spend the summer, the inhabitants fish a lot. Even if it’s not their profession, they mostly have their wooden boats and when they can they go out to fish. Sometimes also for multiple days. And now with the crisis and their jobs becoming more and more precarious, they consider expensive seafood, like Calamari, to be almost like → gold. They freeze it and know, that if they happen to lose their job, they can always sell it and live off it. Is there a similar sense of dependency and security with respect to the sea and its creatures in Portugal?

As a fisherman, your life is completely free. You’re paid by the percent of the catch. The more we caught, the more money we would make. You have to be fast. You’re awake for 48 hours to work on it.

Six days at sea, you can catch up to → 15.000 kilos of fish, on average. Mainly trout and sole: as they are the fish that live on the bottom of the sea. Each trip lasts about six days, then you unload the fish, for example, in England + they come back on a truck. Then the boat sails again.

A beam trawler uses 3.000 liters of fuel in 24 hours. A skipper gets paid 10.000 euros/month. But you have to work a lot for that money. When you’re at sea you always work. Even if you don’t work, your muscles are working to keep you straight.

A fisherman is the only professional hunter in the world. There’s nothing more important in the world than having – and providing – food. Nowadays there are lots of laws and quotas regulating the fishing industry. Before things were more free.