The new fishing quotas just passed in Santiago are fine on paper, like a map of the sea drawn by someone who’s never seen a wave. They let the industrial boats take 70% of what we used to catch, and call it "sustainable" because some economist in a suit says the fish will come back. I’ve been pulling nets from the same waters since I was sixteen, and the sea doesn’t lie — when the octopus get smaller and the corvina stop singing at dawn, something is dead. My brother drowned in ’98 because the storm came fast and his radio failed, but the trawlers had warnings hours early — they always do. You can’t manage the ocean like a spreadsheet. And you can’t trust a law made by men who think "artisanal fishing" is a cute word for poverty.
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