A captain's fuel crisis deepens as the cooperative seeks federal help

Captain Javier Montoya sat in the wheelhouse of the Esperanza at dawn on Thursday, watching the fuel gauge on his diesel tank and doing arithmetic in his head. A full tank—2,800 litres—now costs 840 florins. Six months ago it cost 620. The difference amounts to 220 florins per full tank, or roughly 15 percent of his weekly gross revenue on a good week. On the weeks when the sea is rough or the catch is modest, that 15 percent is the difference between profit and loss.

Montoya has worked the coastal waters of Costa Mar for thirty-two years. He knows the reef breaks, the seasonal migrations of grouper and snapper, the texture of the morning wind. What he does not know is how to absorb a 34 percent spike in fuel costs in six months. Neither, it seems, does the Costa Mar Fishing Cooperative, which represents 187 boat captains across the peninsula and has begun a formal campaign for federal price intervention.

The cooperative's letter to the Federal Treasury, delivered last week, argues that small-boat fisheries are a critical food security and employment anchor for Costa Mar's interior towns. Rising fuel costs, the letter states, are pushing captains below the break-even point and threatening to consolidate the industry into the hands of larger, better-capitalised operators. The cooperative is asking for a federal fuel subsidy or a price-stabilisation mechanism, similar to those used in other regions for agricultural inputs.