When fuel costs eat the catch

Captain Héctor Morales of the María Consolación leaves Puerto Azul's eastern docks at 04:30, before the heat arrives. The boat is a thirty-foot wooden seiner, built for the shallow coastal waters where snapper and grouper school in the summer months. On this particular Tuesday in July, Morales has budgeted exactly enough diesel to reach the fishing ground twelve kilometres offshore, work the reef edge for four hours, and return. Anything more is a calculation he cannot afford.

The María Consolación belongs to the Puerto Azul Fishing Cooperative, a network of seventeen boats that have worked these waters for four decades. But the working week has changed. Diesel prices, which hovered at 1.40 florins per litre in early 2025, have climbed to 1.87 florins. For Morales, that means a tank that cost 280 florins last year now costs 375. His net income has compressed by a third.

The squeeze is visible in the catch logs. Cooperative boats are fishing fewer days per week and staying closer to shore, accepting lower volumes rather than burning fuel to reach the deeper grounds where larger fish command higher prices at the cooperative's auction house. The cooperative's general manager, Rosa Díaz, says the pattern is spreading across Costa Mar's small-boat fleet.