Tonga divers strike

[clarionreef]

Hi people,
I just spoke to a group of divers in Tonga by phone and they just went on strike. Some exporters there are rather famous for holding their plane tickets until they expire and then keeping their last 2-3 months pay if their contracts are not renewed. So they stand to lose their trip home and their last pay which would send them home empty handed.

The pressure is to force them to renew the contract if they ever want to get paid or/and go home.

Coupled with history of crowbar collecting and the coercion and the pressure to dive routinely to death defying depths in search of ventralis anthias one may well conclude that there is indeed "something rotten in Tonga."

I have as roomates here in Papua New Guinea [ training team ] and their stories about the insensitivity of exporters could fill volumes.
It must be on account that only people with connections to the "royal elite" can get export permits and this weeds out normal people.
Perhaps it promotes more selfish, self important and opportunistic types. Killing divers is bad enough but continuing the same coercion that did that in the first place is shocking.

I will bring two of the guys to Papua New Guinea to serve as trainers but need a new gig collecting for several others. This may shut down all but the easy Tongan exports for awhile but so be it. They cannot be allowed to abuse Filipino divers like this any longer and need to be held acountable.
Since the Tongan people suffer from a rather corrupt government, the police, the immigration and the authorities side with the exporters in all matters automatically and stranded Filipinos have no
recourse.
So, Marshall Islands, Ghana, Tahiti....who needs some super net collectors who were trained for better purposes and for better, more humane business people?
Send me a pm and I can set em up. Meanwhile, all the Filipinos that were trained to travel and collect with nets abroad will spread the word and avoid Tonga. Or....insist on a contract that has built-in safe guards and an open ticket home held by the diver and not locked up by the exporter.

Sincerely,
Steve

PS. Several have been in Tonga for two years and they miss their families and want to go home.


cortez marine
Posted: 02 Jun 2008 01:10
Post subject: deep diver added to train in PNG
We are going to give sanctuary....and add another Filipino diver to the training team as he needs to escape from the mandatory deepwater diving that Tongan and Vanuatuan exporters demand of him...and others.

The divers in Tonga and Vanuatu do not want to dive so deep in search of those damn ventralis now as they have already killed two divers this past year and threaten more every day.

The incredible thing is that after what has happened, they still keep the coercion and the pressure on to force deepwater ventralis collecting.

Buyers should boycott ventralis anthias in America,.
I wish they would also in Japan where so many ventralis go...but they will never support such a thing .

Even though some Tonga exporters refuse to send the guys deep, one called Dateline continues to risk them .
If they were Tongan divers, the deaths would shut down the trade already...but since they were Filipinos, it didn't and the companies get away with it.

So, Dateline has just lost its best diver to our training project here in PNG and we may go for more. [Ironically, diver safety training is a huge priority in the project .]

These guys are easy to take away from companies who treat their divers so badly.
Steve

naesco

 

[clarionreef]

IMO....Coercing divers to dive too deep beyond all reason and safety is the biggest aquarium issue in Tonga and one that is still ongoing.
Next to this, the live rock thing seems trivial.

Crowbarring the pocillaporas to rubble to collect flame hawks is also a big one. The main island is crowbarred all around it where the flame hawks used to come from. Thousands of mature coral heads have been crushed.

Worrying about the mother colonies used for starting coral farms seems a nice concern and I wonder why ruining infinitely more mother colonies to catch the hawks is not.

Tonga has some serious issues to be sure...banning live rock in favor of destructively created cement [rock]? Seems to me its too little , too late, wrong solution on a lesser agenda.
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

No worries...with out rock and coral.... fish are a trivial. If you don't have the first two the last one won't happen anyway. Ban LR and coral and the divers will get the safety the seek...in another Tongan industry (are there any?)

 

[Anonymous]

Crowbarring the pocillaporas to rubble to collect flame hawks is also a big one. The main island is crowbarred all around it where the flame hawks used to come from. Thousands of mature coral heads have been crushed.

Worrying about the mother colonies used for starting coral farms seems a nice concern and I wonder why ruining infinitely more mother colonies to catch the hawks is not.

With the reported American consultant to coral farming in PNG, do you worry that the above concerns, and others, are they type of thing that PNG will have to worry about in the near future?

 

[reefreef]

Buyers should boycott ventralis anthias in America,.
I wish they would also in Japan where so many ventralis go...but they will never support such a thing

Hobbyist should boycott ventralis as they are pretty hard to keep alive anyway.

 

[clarionreef]

Hard to keep?
No, they're tough.... but bursting their swim bladders and rupturing internal tissues by refusing to decompress them properly ruins them and makes them damaged goods.
This information is with-held by exporters who already know about it...and yet, cannot teach divers to remedy it as they themselves haven't got a clue how to handle fishes from the depths properly.
They get over on this as the primary consumer of ventralis ie. Japanese buyers, have zero working knowledge of the issue.
The species is sound...the practices are not.
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

The species is shy and secretive, and as such, can be difficult to acclimate to captive conditions regardless of how they are caught. Mostly they are put in 'community' tanks where they hide and don't really feed. If you isolate them in a tank in a low traffic area, and feed them well and often, you'll have a better chance of acclimating them to captive conditions. Once they have acclimated, they can do pretty well, but acclimation can be pretty tough.

 

[sedgro]

I personally brought 4 ventralis caught by Chip Boyle back on the plane from the Cook Islands with me in 2003. They were in a tank by themselves. They ate, but never well, and I lost all over a period of 6 months one by one. While they may be a sound species they arevery far from easy.