How the Octopus Close Season Affected Women’s Life in Rodrigues Essay

Rodrigues is a 108 squ atomic number 18 kilometre, volcanic originated island, hardened in the Indian ocean at around 600 kilometres at the eastern of the mainland Mauritius. It is surrounded by coral reef varianceing a lagoon with a rich biodiversity, which as twice the size of the land It was formerly know as the tenth district of Mauritius, up to the 10th of December 2002, where it bring home the bacon the status of autonomy, governed by the Rodrigues Regional Assembly. The economy is mainly based on traditional fishing, humble-scale farming, handicraft and an emerging tourism sector.One of the most coarse means of traditional fishing, is the famous octopus catch, which is mainly d hotshot by the Rodriguan women, known here as the piqueuse dourite. This is done at low tide where the fisherman equipped with iron rods, pace up and gobble up the coral barrier, in search of a hole where nests the mollusc. The new authorities elected in February this year, expressed the wish t o consolidate sustainable developments and hold dear local resources, for food security and protection of the environment.In this connection a regulation was adopted by the Rodrigues Regional Assembly in July 2012 for the closedown of octopus catch season as from August 2012 to October 2012. This program is a joint collaboration financed by Smartfish and the Rodrigues Regional assembly. Smartfish is a regional broadcast financed by the European Union and is carry outed by the Indian Ocean Commission in collaboration with the Common Market for Eastern and grey Africa (COMESA) , the east African community (EAC) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development ( IGAB).The grey whale fishers were called for a half day work in the interest of the environment against remuneration in localise for them to cope with the loss of earnings. The fisherwoman at the germ of the project found a lot of difficulties to set with it. They used to wander their octopus on days where they go f ishing and hence treatment money in small quantities, spread over several days. In the program they were paid after a week of work. They found much trouble to wait for the pay and had to adapt themselves to a new form of budgeting and a new form of saving in order to equate expenses for the coming days before next payment.For example Mrs Cupidon of Baladirou, a original fisherwoman, who use to earn around Rs 300 each time she goes fishing, uses go to the nearby shop everyday where she buys food for the day and lapses around Rs 25 rupees to pay the electricity bill at the end of the month. Now macrocosm paid after a week forced her to seek for citation and pay after one week, it has been hard for her to persuade the shop owner to grant her such service. Locating an octopus in the sea is dumb to expert eyes and intuition.Since young age many piqueuse dourite name been initiated to the skill of locating the octopuss next, to tackle it in order to force it out of its hiding p lace and to kill it in such a room as to avoid macrocosm hurt by the mollusc. When, they are called to exert a new profession such as to build stone retaining walls, many of them were in trouble and could not adapt themselves. Moreover it was the first time in their lives where they were placed below the care of a superior, where they had to be punctual and abide to the principles expected from a universe worker. Many supervisors withal xpressed the obstacles they had to overcome to make them respected and to impose put principles.At a time during the programme cycle, there was a match for payment, which had consequent and dramatic impulses on the lives of these fisherwomen. Being not used to keep savings, many of them found themselves without food. Formerly a part of their catch was unploughed for own consumption, but with this program they consumed only food bought from the shop. There were also absentees at school due to the fact that many women were penny slight and cou ld not provide for basic daily needs of their children.In this project, the one who benefitted the most were the fisherwoman themselves who after the opening of the season found their catch being multiplied, where the volume and size of octopus was highly satisfactory, to the point that actually they are keen for the government to repeat the project this year. The venture of this government to implement this program is to be greatly saluted as it goes in the direction of sustainable development. However some measures have to be tuned and re-adapted to suit the peculiarity of the way of living of the fisherwomen and decisions should be taken with their full collaboration.