 Guadeloupe: Guadeloupe fishermen so intensively 

 fished the limited local grounds that no opportunities 

 were available for French fishermen. 



 Dominica: EC fishermen registered in the French 

 Overseas Departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique 

 will be issued 220 licenses allowing them to fish in 

 waters belonging to Dominica. The EC will be 

 limited to using vessels under 40 feet in length (e.g., 

 small artisanal craft). EC payments to the 

 Government of Dominica will total in the 

 neighborhood of $2.5 million. Dominica is a small 

 Caribbean island located between Martinique and 

 Guadeloupe. The EC also agreed to make 

 approximately $180,000 available for fisheries 

 training.'" 



V. FUTURE DIRECTIONS, 1993-96 



EC officials would like to deploy substantial 

 numbers of vessels on distant-water grounds. There 

 appears little likelihood that current arrangements 

 with North American, European, African, and Indian 

 Ocean countries can be significantly expanded. EC 

 officials are hopeful that initiatives with Latin 

 American countries and Nambia will permit the 

 deployment of a significant number of vessels . There 

 is also some possibility of future deployment of some 

 vessels in the Pacific. 



A, LATIN AMERICA 



The only real success of the EC Latin American 

 effort to date has been with Argentina. The EC 

 signed a bilateral access agreement with Argentina in 

 December 1992, which will provide access for 70 EC 

 vessels to harvest 250,000 tons of fish in Argentina's 

 waters for the next 5 years.''* The agreement, which 

 has been been ratified by the EC'^', does not involve 

 any payments for access, a feature that marks many 

 of the agreements the EC has made with African 

 countries."* Instead, the agreement will include the 

 establishment of many joint venture operations 

 between EC and Argentinean business firms. A total 

 of 35 full-time licenses will be issued, allowing 70 

 vessels access to Argentina's waters. One-third of 

 the vessels will fly the EC flag (or national flags) and 

 two-thirds will become Argentine vessels after three 

 years and will fly the Argentina flag."'' The 

 agreement may be automatically extended for an 



additional 2 years if there are no formal objections to 

 the continuation of the agreement.'" One of the first 

 ships to go will be the Mar de Vigo, the one-time flag 

 ship of the Spanish freezer fleet based at the port of 

 Vigo in northern Spain. The ship has been idle for 

 several years but is being overhauled and readied for 

 the EC- Argentina fishing program later in 1993.'" 



The EC Fisheries Council in 1990 mandated that 

 the EC Commission pursue access arrangements with 

 other Latin American countries: Chile, Columbia, 

 Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The EC 

 has several fisheries assistance projects in South 

 America, especially focusing on the Andean 

 countries. The EC, in November 1990, expanded its 

 fisheries assistance programs to Central America and 

 granted $16 million to develop fisheries in Costa 

 Rica, EI Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, 

 Nicaragua, and Panama.'** The EC Central 

 American program was designed to study fishery 

 resources, improve fisheries management, train 

 artisanal fishermen, support aquaculture, and provide 

 new fish harvesting and processing techniques for 

 local shrimp fisheries. This is a pattern followed by 

 the EC in other regions and suggests that the EC is 

 carefully studying Latin America for possible future 

 agreements. Exploratory talks have been held with 

 Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela.'*' 



EC officials have met with fishery officials in 

 several Latin American countries. The countries 

 involved appear to have shown little interest in the 

 EC proposals. The only successful result has been 

 the 1992 bilateral agreement signed with Argentina. 

 EC officials are hopeful that the successful conclusion 

 of the agreement with Argentina will encourage other 

 Latin American countries to negotiate similar 

 agreements."** The Argentine success, however, may 

 be due to a unique set of circumstances related to the 

 British- Argentine dispute over the Falkland Islands.'" 

 As a result, the EC may have difficulty reaching 

 similar accords elsewhere in Latin America. Any 

 agreements reached with other countries would 

 almost certainly be on a much smaller scale than the 

 Argentine agreement. Other Latin American 

 countries do not have large underutilized stocks of 

 interest to EC fishermen. The largest underutilized 

 stock is currently jack mackerel off Chile and Peru. 

 Both Chile and Peru are currently expanding their 

 fleets to be able fish jack mackerel in their own 

 waters. Substantial quantities could be fished outside 



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