A captain's arithmetic: fuel, quota, and survival

Captain Rodrigo Vega was on the water by 5:30 a.m., his thirty-foot seiner cutting through the grey chop two kilometres off Playa Negra. The engine burned diesel at a rate he had memorized years ago: 1.2 litres per nautical mile. The market price that morning, delivered to Puerto Azul's cooperative fuel dock, was 2.18 florins per litre. He could do the arithmetic in his head while watching the sounder.

Vega has fished these waters for twenty-three years, long enough to remember when the question was simply where the snapper were running. Now the question is whether they are worth finding. A tonne of red snapper fetches around 800 florins at the cooperative's dock. His fuel budget for a four-day trip, running at cruise speed, would consume roughly 230 litres. That is 502 florins in diesel alone, before ice, nets, and the crew's share.

The federal fisheries quota system that governs Costa Mar's catch is meant to protect the stock. Vega does not dispute that. But the quota—allocated by weight and species, renewed quarterly by the Federal Hydro Authority's sister division—has not moved in three years, while fuel costs have. A captain's margin, once comfortable, has become a calculation of whether to fish at all.