cortez marine":2pr4i892 said:
Mike,
The nettings cost prohibitive?????????
I guess the MAC, MAMTI budgets for more important things...or was it all just overlooked?
Its 10 bucks a diver for a year per diver...the so-called quality stuff....ie. 2 lb monofilament.
The 1 lb junk netting is 4 bucks per diver per 3-4 months as it degrades and tears to shreds quickly.
The so called expensive netting is better, last longer and keeps them off cyanide.
The junk netting is for saving money in city based budgets and for keeping divers inefficient, less productive and returning to cyanide fishing.
In Batangas and Palawig diver may weave their own at great time and effort. The quality net is so much coveted by these guys.
Why deny it to them?
Jeremy is so right about corruption and private agendas....
Steve
PS Whats a matter people, afraid to call out MAC because its marinated w/ a few of our own?
They leave us undefended by charges of unsustainability from the outside because they are continually squandering the chances...and the years to get this done right.
They could spring for the netting with the cost of just the entertainment budget at the next trade show.
Steve,
Again, I don't disagree with you.
However how are you proposing that a poor fisherman in the Philippines contact a supplier here in the US, buy the net, then commerically import it, then pay the duty on it? There is no possible way to do that for $10.
The only way you can reach that $10 figure is by importing enough bundles to make nets in the thousands. The average fisherfolk will not make enough money to buy a minimum lot, even over the course of a decade! You know this, you lived there, and we have discussed what it would take to send even a minimum order over there. You would need contributions in the four digit range.
Again, while I can agree that MAC probably should act to get a minimum order together to distribute free of charge, I can also understand if they do not see it as part of their mission. Should MAC be involved in the netting supply business? Is that part of their mandate?
Let's put this into perspective here. Let's say you make $36,500 per year. You go to a training session. Do you expect that the agency doing the training would give you and every participant something worth $400? What if you don't continue to follow what the agency does or says? Is the "thing" still free?
People need to understand that giving away a net in the Philippines, where the average fishermen makes well below the average national wage, is like giving away an item worth at least four days of their typical wages. You don't necessarily want to give it away to fishermen not serious about reform. So how do you give it away to the serious players? Not all of them are in MAC. And when would MAC distribute the nets? When they start the training? Or only upon certification? How would we then deal with the 100 or so fishermen in Palauig, Coron and Bagac that MAC abandoned? So they would have gotten nets two or three years ago, but now? Where would they go to purchase replacements? MAC? Would MAC sell the netting to non-MAC certified fishermen?
I'm of two minds here, and I can see both sides of the coin. The reformist in me wants to see the nets readily available to everyone who will use them for the purpose intended. Maybe this should mean that, in the case of hand netting, the netting should go directly to the fishermen (and in this case, since Guia was mentioned, not directly to Guia...) But this also presumes that Guia's fishermen were strictly net-caught, not "mostly" net-caught, right???
This still all begs the question why you begrudge sending your supplier the supplies she needs to keep sending you the product you need to run your business? In this whole thread, this is the screaming undercurrent.
Regards.
Mike Kirda
