It’s November, springtime in Cancas, a coastal community in northern Peru, and the sea is calm; it only gets rough at the beginning of summer, which in the Southern Hemisphere falls at the end of the year, and in the last days of August. In the afternoons, when the sky is purple, the tide goes out and leaves behind a muddy beach populated by small crustaceans that scatter about as tourists amble by. The water, now a deep blue, is inhabited by sea lions, turtles, seahorses and crabs, as well as migratory humpback whales headed north to Colombia. Known as Mar de Grau, this is one of the most biodiverse regions of Peru’s marine territory and an area recently protected for its ecological importance. There are no major predators in the water, and seemingly no other dangers inhabiting it. It’s been this way for centuries. Twenty years ago, however, the tides brought in something else. “There are pirates,” one young fisher here tells us as he watches the waves crash against the rocks. More than 500 artisanal fishers live in Cancas, one of Peru’s last bastions of traditional fishing. Cancas is the capital of Canoas de Punta Sal district, which lies in the Tumbes region of northwestern Peru. It’s located just three hours from the border with Ecuador, across which pirates have routinely arrived since 2005 to exploit fishing villages along the Tumbes coast. The pirate gangs, made up of Ecuadorians and Peruvians, assault artisanal fishers offshore. To reach the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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