Traditional Industry Hopes to Lure West

By ANTHONY MITCHELL

By ANTHONY MITCHELL

the Associated Press

DJIBOUTI – With hook and bait in his calloused hands, Ali Mohamed casts his line – just as fishermen in these warm waters have done for centuries.

Like the 300 or so other fishermen out in their tiny boats on this breezy early morning, Ali uses no nets, no trawlers, no modern equipment. Yet the Djibouti fishermen this year may begin exporting to Europe and the U nited States, their catch marketed as safe, fresh and kind to nature.

Across the West, the scarcity of local fish has led consumers to scramble for seafood from remote corners of the world. Consumers are also becoming more aware of business practices and are demanding food from sources that don’t harm the environment.

And so, in a month or so, fresh grouper will be flown overnight, packed in ice, some 9,300 miles to the West Coast for the U.S. market – labeled Africana Wild.

“We have almost fished our waters out,” says Donald Campbell of U.S.-based Gulf Marine Investments. Campbell is looking to fly 22,000 pounds of grouper each week from the hot, Massachusetts- sized republic of Djibouti to San Francisco, whose seas once teemed with the fish. “Consumers will pay a premium for sustainable, well- sourced fish.”

The shortages caused by overfishing elsewhere are reviving the hook-and-line industry off the coast of the Horn of Africa, whose waters are much-prized and vastly under exploited. There are no deep swells here, and trawlers are banned from the craggy, 195-mile coastline.

“Our fishing industry was dying, but now it is picking up again,” says Ali, his toothless grin, wild hair and weather-beaten face the norm among the men who rise hours before daybreak to catch fresh red snapper, grouper, barracuda and tuna.

Fishermen bring in a daily catch of around 3 tons. The World Trade Organization thinks they can scale up fifty fold without depleting stocks.

“But we do not want to plunder these seas,” says Mehrdad Radseresht, a naturalized American and son of an Iranian diplomat, who has invested $3.5 million in port facilities with cold storage and a laboratory. “We want to use fishing methods once thought old- fashioned to preserve stocks.”

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