Tuna Tussle

Of all the furies of the southern seas, few are as furious as a U.S. tuna-boat skipper forced to pay up to $8,000 to the government of Ecuador for a one-shot license to drop his nets anywhere within 200 miles of the Ecuadorean coast. Last year, says August Felando, general manager of the American Tuna Boat Association, West Coast skippers were hooked for a cool $500,000 for the privilege of fishing in the 66,000 sq. mi. of blue Pacific Ocean claimed by Ecuador. "The association felt that things were getting worse, with fines and harassments from the Ecuadorean government," says Felando. "We decided to have a showdown."

Last week 21 U.S. tuna boats nosed inside Ecuador's 200-mile limit and deliberately began fishing without licenses. What happened next, and who showed whom, depends on who tells the fish story.

According to the U.S. fishermen, two of their boats operating 14 miles from the coast were stopped by an Ecuadorean patrol boat and ordered to put into the port of Manta for licenses. When they refused, the other 19 surrounded the patrol boat. The Ecuadoreans sent an emergency call for a destroyer; shots were fired across two tuna boats' bows, and the Yankee skippers agreed to go along under force of arms. The way Ecuador's government tells it, the U.S. tuna men were fishing within three miles of the coast. No shots were fired, and the Yankee skippers finally agreed to go along peacefully.

Even a phone call from Secretary of State Rusk direct to Ecuador's foreign minister did not budge the Ecuadoreans. Rusk did manage to persuade his opposite number to take the U.S. tuna boats to some port other than Manta, where unions are infiltrated by Communists, and where most of Ecuador's jealous tuna fishermen are based. But Ecuador stuck to its three-mile-limit story and, what's more, hung onto the two U.S. tuna boats as it prepared to fine their owners for poaching.

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