I have been a fisheries consultant for almost 25 years. Obviously, I love it. But there have always been aspects of it that struggle a lot.
top crew
The first and most obvious one is the neo-colonial nature of it. While I try to distance myself from the general attitude around this (to separate myself from some other consultants), the job is based on the continuous identification of the colonial (now former colonial) “subjects” that need protection and guidance under a narrative that depicts local states as inadequate for providing the solutions. (It is even hard to digest while i write it)
I discuss this upsetting (for me, at least) issue openly with my colleagues; thankfully, they don’t see it that way. The best analogy I had was the one of having a foreign coach come to train your rugby team (something from which Argentina has benefited).
I justify my neo-colonial fears under the perhaps silly excuses that I have in all of my ancestries a long history of colonised people, and to an extent, I was on the losing side of a war between a full-fledged coloniser and a state that argued they inherited the Malvinas/Falklands from their colonisers after independence (two bald men fighting over a comb, as Borges put it). Also, as I’m older than most of my counterparts, I have definitively made more mistakes than then, so I’m here to help from my fuckups and not from my "enlightenment.”
The second aspect I struggle with is that many end-of-mission reports recommend continuing with assistance. For me, the proof of the success of my job as a consultant is not to be needed ever again in the area where I was working! If I have to come back to do the same or something similar, then I fail in 1) doing my job and 2) motivating and supporting the change that I was asked to foster.
There are more. But for another day...
Unfortunately, I have learned to live with the colonial aspect of it, and thankfully, I have had quite a few projects where the second aspect evaporates. Here is an example.
A couple of days ago, my friend and colleague Beau (top bloke!), whom I have been working with for over six years in the Marshalls, sent me a few pictures that made me very happy.
Back in late 2019, we worked out a selection process for scales to be used during transhipments to control the potential of misreporting (among other things) in Majuro by the transhipment monitors. We are all very proud of the job and have procured quite a few of those scales to operate with them.
This proved quite successful for us, and good ideas spread for themselves, so this week, on an interagency collaboration, the Tuvalu Fisheries Agency (I wrote about their work here) sent a couple of their officers to work in RMI with Beau, Melvin, Steven, and Stevenson on the way we use them and operate, so Tuvalu adapts their use to their reality.
This is totally sui generis among the agencies, with no consultant involved, just capable fisheries officers working with each other in a Pacific-led spirit of cooperation.
I absolutely loved it. And I really appreciated Beau’s gesture of sending me the pictures as a kind acknowledgement.
As I wrote in the past: “My Pacific colleagues are the present and future, while I happily fade into a past where those that “know best” have to be from somewhere else.”
scales in action