container port in Hamburg.
8
The Fishing Industry and People Trafficking: A Journey to West Africa
13 November 2007
Wilfried Hermann, the crane driver, feels a jerk as he lifts up the recycled clothing container. The container has been sitting in Hamburg port for four days now which is much longer than most of the other containers, which have already come and gone. In the meantime many large container freighters have docked in the quay, but these are all headed towards Asia or America. Ships heading in the direction of West Africa only come by once or twice a week.
The container is placed into the belly of the Hannover – a combined passenger and container ship that regularly sails the West African route (the Canaries, Dakar, Lagos, Cape Town). Wilfried Hermann has to unload the ship before reloading it again, and as he does he notes to himself the main difference between the freight heading to Asia and freight heading to Africa: ships heading to Asia sail with more empty containers than full ones. However, it’s the exact opposite for the ones heading to Africa. Lots of full containers are sent to Africa and then come back empty. This illustrates the fact that Africa, aside from its limited oil resources, is not a big player in the globalised world of today. The Hannover sets off late in the afternoon. It sails back down the River Elbe until it reaches the North German port of Cuxhaven, then across the North Sea and the English Channel, and finally heads south along the Western European coast.
14 November 2007
As the ship passes through the English Channel, engineer Karl Hartmann heads out on deck with a pair of binoculars and looks out to sea. Karl is a ‘Duck Spotter’. He’s looking for ducks bobbing about in the water – a popular hobby for many people who spend lots of time at sea. ‘Duck Spotting’ began in January 1992, when a freighter lost a couple of containers in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a storm. One of the containers opened and about 29,000 plastic ducks, beavers, turtles and frogs floated up to the surface. The majority of them drifted south and washed up on the Indonesian and South American coast, and around 10,000 headed northwards through the Bering Sea’s Arctic waters. Sometime in 1995, many of the plastic creatures became frozen in ice. Six years later, near Greenland, they were released when the ice melted and floated into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Gulf Stream then sent them towards Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula.
These unsinkable plastic specimens, bleached by the sun and the saltwater, can be identified by the ‘First Years’ branding stamped into the plastic. If you happen to find one, contact Curtis Ebbesmeyer. For him they are invaluable objects, whose journeys can tell us a lot about global ocean currents. Curtis Ebbesmeyer has even set up a website dedicated to tracking global flotsam: https://beachcombersalert.org/RubberDuckies.html . As well as plastic ducks, the site reports on trainers, glass balls, and the eggs of the mysterious elephant bird.
16 November 2007
Ten hours ago, the Hannover left the northern Spanish port of Bilbao carrying both passengers and containers bound for the Canary Islands. The ship sailed south, parallel to the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, until it reached the Strait of Gibraltar (which is approximately 60 kilometres long). The strait joins the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. On a clear day you can see the coast of Africa from Gibraltar; at this point Europe and Africa are only separated by 14 kilometres of water. At no other point on the planet does the world of the poor and the world of the rich come into such close proximity. When the weather is good you can also see Europe from the Moroccan coast, which for many Africans is a longed-for paradise.
Today, however, everything is hidden in mist. This means that the passengers don’t notice the ship taking a slightly south-westerly course
8
The Fishing Industry and People Trafficking: A Journey to West Africa
13 November 2007
Wilfried Hermann, the crane driver, feels a jerk as he lifts up the recycled clothing container. The container has been sitting in Hamburg port for four days now which is much longer than most of the other containers, which have already come and gone. In the meantime many large container freighters have docked in the quay, but these are all headed towards Asia or America. Ships heading in the direction of West Africa only come by once or twice a week.
The container is placed into the belly of the Hannover – a combined passenger and container ship that regularly sails the West African route (the Canaries, Dakar, Lagos, Cape Town). Wilfried Hermann has to unload the ship before reloading it again, and as he does he notes to himself the main difference between the freight heading to Asia and freight heading to Africa: ships heading to Asia sail with more empty containers than full ones. However, it’s the exact opposite for the ones heading to Africa. Lots of full containers are sent to Africa and then come back empty. This illustrates the fact that Africa, aside from its limited oil resources, is not a big player in the globalised world of today. The Hannover sets off late in the afternoon. It sails back down the River Elbe until it reaches the North German port of Cuxhaven, then across the North Sea and the English Channel, and finally heads south along the Western European coast.
14 November 2007
As the ship passes through the English Channel, engineer Karl Hartmann heads out on deck with a pair of binoculars and looks out to sea. Karl is a ‘Duck Spotter’. He’s looking for ducks bobbing about in the water – a popular hobby for many people who spend lots of time at sea. ‘Duck Spotting’ began in January 1992, when a freighter lost a couple of containers in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a storm. One of the containers opened and about 29,000 plastic ducks, beavers, turtles and frogs floated up to the surface. The majority of them drifted south and washed up on the Indonesian and South American coast, and around 10,000 headed northwards through the Bering Sea’s Arctic waters. Sometime in 1995, many of the plastic creatures became frozen in ice. Six years later, near Greenland, they were released when the ice melted and floated into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Gulf Stream then sent them towards Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula.
These unsinkable plastic specimens, bleached by the sun and the saltwater, can be identified by the ‘First Years’ branding stamped into the plastic. If you happen to find one, contact Curtis Ebbesmeyer. For him they are invaluable objects, whose journeys can tell us a lot about global ocean currents. Curtis Ebbesmeyer has even set up a website dedicated to tracking global flotsam: https://beachcombersalert.org/RubberDuckies.html . As well as plastic ducks, the site reports on trainers, glass balls, and the eggs of the mysterious elephant bird.
16 November 2007
Ten hours ago, the Hannover left the northern Spanish port of Bilbao carrying both passengers and containers bound for the Canary Islands. The ship sailed south, parallel to the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, until it reached the Strait of Gibraltar (which is approximately 60 kilometres long). The strait joins the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. On a clear day you can see the coast of Africa from Gibraltar; at this point Europe and Africa are only separated by 14 kilometres of water. At no other point on the planet does the world of the poor and the world of the rich come into such close proximity. When the weather is good you can also see Europe from the Moroccan coast, which for many Africans is a longed-for paradise.
Today, however, everything is hidden in mist. This means that the passengers don’t notice the ship taking a slightly south-westerly course
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