Blood on the Water: Fish Wars

June 20, 2002 -- -- A lone Australian navy Seahawk helicopter swept towards the crew of the Russian fishing boat Lena on a gray February day this year.

The rust-speckled trawler and its dozens of workers had been working in one of the loneliest places on Earth, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, where extreme cold and rough seas discourage all but the heartiest and most determined of seamen.

But the Lena certainly had incentive to be in these waters. By the time the Seahawk arrived, the Lena had in its hold an estimated $1.25 million worth of Patagonian toothfish, also known as Chilean sea bass.

As the Seahawk hovered overhead, a team of troops and fisheries officials fast-roped on to the deck. The boarding party was clad in bright-red cold weather coveralls, helmeted — and armed.

The troops and fisheries officials had arrived because the Lena's treasure was illegal, and they were armed, because they expected resistance.

The traditional view of a fisherman's life is that it's no less serene work than that of a farmer — the fisherman plucks his treasures from the sea just as the farmer harvests his fruits and vegetables from the earth.

But seldom do people realize how much pain and sacrifice is involved. Job surveys have consistently named fishing as one of the world's most dangerous professions.

Most information has pointed to natural forces and the heavy equipment involved, but danger comes from other human beings as well. The Lena is only one of multitudes of poaching and smuggling cases that take place annually around the world — and a comparatively non-violent case as well.

"It is a very dangerous profession," said Susan Shirley of Alaska's Department of Fish and Game. "We always though it was related to the mechanical aspects, all the hydraulics involved, but I suppose there is another aspect," she said.

Actually, there are many other aspects.

Organized Crime — Before 1991, the caviar market in the Caspian Sea was tightly controlled by Russia and Iran, which diligently maintained stocks. It is the source of 90 percent of the world's Beluga sturgeon, whose caviar is one of the most expensive animal products on Earth. In the years since the Soviet Union's collapse, however, as much as 12 times the legal amount of sturgeon has been removed from the area yearly.