Rodrigues is a 108 square kilometre, volcanic started island, situated in the American indian Ocean at around six-hundred kilometres in the east with the mainland Mauritius. It is surrounded by coral reef forming a lagoon with a rich biodiversity, which usually as 2 times the size of the land It was formerly known as the tenth area of Mauritius, up to the 10th of 12 , 2002, exactly where it gained the position of autonomy, governed by the Rodrigues Local Assembly. Our economy is mainly depending on traditional angling, low-scale farming, handicraft and an emerging tourism sector. One of the most prevalent means of traditional fishing, is a famous octopus catch, which is mainly made by the Rodriguan women, known here since the “piqueuse d’ourite”.
This is certainly done at low wave where the fisherman equipped with flat iron rods, tempo up and down the coral buffer, in search of a hole in which nests the mollusc. The newest government chosen in Feb this year, portrayed the would like to consolidate lasting developments and protect local resources, intended for food protection and safeguard of the environment. In this interconnection a rules was followed by the Rodrigues Regional Set up in September 2012 for the seal of octopus catch time as from August 2012 to October 2012.
This system is a joint collaboration loaned by Smartfish and the Rodrigues Regional assembly. Smartfish is known as a regional plan financed by the European Union and it is implemented by Indian Ocean Commission in collaboration while using Common Marketplace for East and southern Africa (COMESA), the east African community (EAC) plus the Intergovernmental Power on Development ( IGAB). The Octopus fishers were called for a half time work in the interest of the environment against remuneration in order for them to manage the loss of earnings. The fisherwoman at the beginning of the project located a lot of difficulties to adapt with it.
That they used to promote their octopus on days where they go fishing and so handling profit small quantities, spread over a lot of days. In the program these people were paid after a week of. They discovered much problems to wait intended for the pay and had to adapt themselves to a new form of budgeting and a new type of saving to be able to meet expenditures for the coming days prior to next payment. For example Mrs Cupidon of Baladirou, a professional fisherwoman, who use to gain around Rs 300 every time she moves fishing, uses go to the local shop every day where the lady buys meals for the day and keeps about Rs twenty-five rupees to pay the electricity costs at the end with the month.
At this point being paid after a week forced her to seek to get credit and pay after seven days, it has been hard for her to persuade the shop owner to offer her such service. Locating an octopus in the sea is reserved to expert eyes and intuition. Seeing that young age many ” piqueuse d’ourite” had been initiated to the skill of locating the octopus’s next, to tackle that in order to force it out of its concealing place and also to kill this in such a way about avoid becoming hurt by mollusc. When, they are called to exert a new occupation such as to generate stone holding onto walls, most of them were in trouble and could certainly not adapt themselves.
Moreover it absolutely was the first time in their lives wherever they were put below the supervision of a superior, where that were there to be prompt and abide to the principles predicted from a public member of staff. Many supervisors also xpressed the obstacles they had to overcome to make them highly regarded and to enforce laid guidelines. At a time during the programme cycle, there was a delay intended for payment, which had major and remarkable impulses for the lives of these fisherwomen. Being not used to keep savings, quite a few found themselves without meals.
Formerly an element of their capture was retained for individual consumption, but with this program they will consumed just food bought from the shop. There were also absentees by school due to the fact that many women were penny fewer and could not really provide for basic daily demands of their children. In this project, the one who also benefitted the most were the fisherwoman themselves who following your opening from the season found their capture being increased, where the volume level and scale octopus was highly sufficient, to the point that actually they can be keen to get the government to repeat the project this coming year.
The venture of this government to put into practice this program will be greatly saluted as it goes in the way of environmentally friendly development. Nevertheless some steps have to be tuned and re-adapted to suit the peculiarity with the way of living from the fisherwomen and decisions should be taken using their full collaboration.
