The fishing gong sounds at 5:00 local time. The metallic sound of a hammer on an old oxygen tank wakes me up.

It's a fishing day in Tristan da Cunha, a small corner of the South Atlantic with just over 200 inhabitants. The nearest inhabited settlement to this British Overseas Territory is more than 2,400 km away.

As the gong fades, dogs bark, engines rev, and the scraping of rubber boots fills the air as fishermen head to Callshot harbor, nicknamed "the Beach," to bait their traps and prepare their boats. With only 18 to 72 days of fishing per season, every opportunity counts.

They are after Tristan's most prized product: the St. Paul's lobster (Jasus paulensis), found only near remote islands in the Southern Ocean.

Because of its sweet and delicate meat, a single tail can fetch up to US$39 in the US market.

In the archipelago's cool and temperate waters, these crustaceans thrive close to shore, at depths of up to 200 meters.

Because intensive fishing decades ago led to a significant reduction in the lobster population, today the inhabitants know that, without adequate protection, the lobsters are in danger.

“We have always relied on the ocean as a source of food, managing it to the best of our ability. This means not taking more than necessary,” says James Glass, director of the Tristan da Cunha Department of Fisheries.

“This “It’s a beautiful place, and we want it to stay that way,” he concludes.

With the world’s oceans facing increasing pressures and climate change, invasive species and illegal industrial fishing threaten both the marine ecosystem and the island’s main source of income.

But the people of Tristan da Cunha are determined to ensure the long-term survival of the spiny lobsters—and their own.

From generation to generation

Jason Green and his fishing partner,Dean Repetto, they have been sailing together for a decade. Like most Tristanians, their ancestral connection to the sea stretches back more than a century. “Fishing has been passed down through generations in my family,” says Repetto, who also works as a mechanic for the Tristan Department of Fisheries. Dean, Jason, and their apprentice set sail on Island Pride, their bright orange 8-meter boat. Departing from Tristan’s small harbor, they head east, making their way through coastal forests of giant kelp, towering brown algae that can grow more than half a meter a day and reach lengths of up to 45 meters. Their target is a fishing spot that local fishermen can identify by triangulating landmarks and measuring the ocean depth in certain locations. “It might be a pinnacle, a ravine, a hut, or a hill, and you align them together,” explains Eugene Repetto, who fishes on Kingfisher.

On the boat, the apprentice's face pales, a symptom of seasickness. It's an especially hard job for some.

Then, while the apprentice sleeps, Green drops 16 large traps into deep water. He leaves them for hours, long enough for the lobsters to find the bait.

Repetto then sails into shallower waters, where Green lowers hoop nets to catch lobsters in the underwater kelp forests. These nets are hauled aboard every hour. Before returning to port, they retrieve the traps they set earlier.

Omnivorous and clawless, Tristan lobsters use their long antennae to navigate the rocky seabed, feeding at night on sea urchins, mollusks, and other invertebrates that consume kelp.

This contributes to the conservation of the underwater forests that are home to many other marine species.

Spiny lobsters are a vital link in the food web, feeding on dead animals and organic matter, recycling nutrients, and serving as prey for predators like octopuses.

Far Away

The 229 inhabitants of Tristan da Cunha live in extreme isolation, surrounded by millions of square kilometers of open ocean.

Their nearest inhabited neighbor, Saint Helena, where Napoleon spent his final days, lies 2,414 km to the north. Montevideo, Uruguay, is 4,023 km to the west. To the south, only a few uninhabited islands separate Tristan from the icy wilderness of Antarctica.

The only regular route to Tristan, from Cape Town, South Africa, is unreliable. Securing a place on one of the nine annual ships is just the beginning. The 2,819 km journey can take up to two weeks, depending on the weather.

I spent 10 months on Tristan with photographer Julia Gunther, from December 2023 to October 2024.

When we first arrived, heavy swells forced us to wait five days aboard a boat offshore before we could disembark.

The island's only settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, has no airport, hotels, or restaurants. What it does have in abundance are towering cliffs, a strong sense of community, and a vast expanse of pristine ocean.

Isolation and a strong survival instinct have shaped every aspect of life here.

Commercial fishing arrived on Tristan in the 1940s, and since then, lobster has been the cornerstone of the island's economy.

Spiny lobsters even feature on Tristan's coat of arms.

“Lobsters used to be so plentiful that people could walk out to the rock pools at low tide and catch them,” Glass recalls.

While there is still no conclusive evidence, largely due to the limited number of studies, there are indications that climate change could have serious consequences for Tristan's marine environment.

One study shows that rising sea temperatures are already affecting the summer growth of kelp, a crucial habitat for lobsters, and that warming seas could also push lobsters further south, beyond the island's reach.

Cheseldon Lavarello, now 82, tells me about the huge catches he helped bring ashore when he first went to sea at the age of 15: “My fishing partner and I could catch 1,360 kg in a day using "Only 10 nets."

No more than that

In its early days, the fishery was barely regulated, Glass recalls. Lobsters smaller than the current size limit and egg-bearing females were often caught before they had a chance to reproduce.

It wasn't until 1983 that the Island Council imposed size limits. A quota was established in 1991; Although, according to Glass, neither was strictly enforced until 1997.

The largest fishing entity on the island during our visit was Ovenstone Agencies, which holds a concession to catch a large number of spiny lobsters: approximately 800,000 per year, in addition to 110 tons of Antarctic butterfish (Hyperoglyphe antarctica).

This South African company provides employment, electricity to the island, and maritime transport of cargo and passengers, including medical evacuations, to Cape Town.

From August 2023 to April 2024, Ovenstone's main fishing vessel, the MFV Edinburgh, fished around nearby islands, landing approximately 316 tons,most of the island's annual quota.

Tristanian Fisheries observers accompanied each expedition, measuring hundreds of lobsters daily. The catch was processed, packaged, and frozen on board for shipment to Cape Town.

“Ovenstone has an exclusive license. It’s very strict,” says Philip Kendall, Tristan’s UK manager. “They are required to report exactly what they have caught.”

Local fishermen like Jason Green, on smaller boats, caught the remaining portion of the quota, up to 125 tons.

“We need to have measuring rods on hand to check for undersized lobsters… and each boat must not exceed the correct number of nets and traps,” says Green.

Throughout the year, the Department of Fisheries tags lobsters, tracks their movements, and uses underwater cameras to monitor their health.

“Random sampling and biomass data help us understand fish populations,” says Sarah Glass-Green, a fisheries officer with Tristan.

Pristine at Risk

Despite its extreme isolation, Tristan is not immune to the kinds of environmental pressures faced by other, closer communities.

The island lies on a busy shipping route, and with the The expansion of world trade in the late 20th century also increased the possibility that a single marine catastrophe could devastate the island's fisheries. A series of environmental crises in the late 2000s highlighted just how vulnerable the marine environment is. In June 2006, for example, a group of Tristanians offshore spotted a huge floating oil platform, the PXXI, grounded at Trypot Point, an inaccessible stretch of the island with steep cliffs rising 500 meters from a narrow, rocky beach. The PXXI had broken free from its tugboat a month earlier while being towed from Brazil to Singapore. Fisherman Shane Green remembers first seeing the platform while fishing with his grandfather. “It looked like a small hotel. We passed right underneath it in the boat. It was covered in barnacles. Looking up, it was like being under a skyscraper.”

While there was no oil spill, PXXI briefly introduced 62 non-native species. One of them, the silver snapper (Diplodus argenteus), an omnivorous reef fish from South America, has since spread to three islands in the archipelago.

Around Tristan, the fish now competes with native species for food and habitat. Its impact is now the focus of a study at the University of Exeter, UK.

In March 2011,The MS Oliva ran aground on Ruisenor Island, spilling 65,000 tons of soybeans and fuel. Thousands of northern rockhopper penguins and other seabirds died.

Despite events like these, various scientific expeditions—including National Geographic's 2017 Pristine Seas expedition led by Paul Rose—have found an abundance of wildlife seemingly undisturbed by commercial fishing or ecological disasters.

Rose and his team confirmed what many islanders already knew: Tristan's seas are among the most pristine on Earth, home to globally important seabird colonies, shark nurseries, and vast kelp forests.

But the study also underscored a growing anxiety: How long could this remarkably healthy marine environment remain intact?

An example to follow

The studies taken together also raised a deeper question: How could Tristan protect its waters for the future without sacrificing its vital fisheries?

The idea of ??a ban The total catch, for example, was anathema. The entire local community depends on fishing for survival, and a fishing ban would not prevent future disasters, most of which have been caused by vessels passing through.

What if external entities imposed a marine protected area that ignored local needs?

“Tristan had a unique opportunity to lead the creation of its marine protected area (MPA),” says Andy Schofield, who heads overseas territory work for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a UK-based wildlife conservation nonprofit.

Between 2017 and 2019, Tristan’s government, Island Council, fishing operators, and conservation scientists developed a plan.

“We needed to tell [the UK]: 'This is what Tristan wants,'” Schofield says.

The final design, adopted in 2019, was largely based on local knowledge. The Marine Protected Area (MPA) covered 687,000 km², with 91% of Tristan da Cunha's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) completely closed to fishing. Crucially, it allowed for the designation of a coastal fishing zone for commercial lobster fishing, thus preserving the island's economic livelihood. The plan also created "Avoidance Areas" for navigation, thereby reducing the risk of accidents near sensitive habitats. Tristan also began sending representatives abroad. "Our waters are a safe haven for wildlife," says Janine Lavarello, Tristan's Marine Protected Area Manager.“We want people to understand that if our small community could establish this huge marine protected area, imagine what larger countries could achieve.” But identifying and designating marine protected areas is comparatively easier than monitoring and enforcing them. Tristan is the only British Overseas Territory without its own ship or airport. It relies on satellite tracking and global networks to monitor almost 700,000 km² of ocean. And the UK Marine Management Organisation supports Tristan's MPZ by interpreting Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) data to identify vessels exhibiting suspicious behavior, such as slowing down or drifting in a closed area, and alerting the Tristan Administrator in the UK. However, Tristan cannot physically intercept violators; It only has a small patrol boat and no coast guard. Glass wants Tristan to have its own vessel. “At the moment, there is no deterrent,” he says. Even so, for now, the Environmental Protection Zone (EPZ) appears to be holding. Maritime Mobility Office analyst Jason Garthwaite says compliance with the EPZ is high, with no confirmed cases of illegal fishing. Nevertheless, the island's waters remain under constant pressure. At 8:30 a.m. local time on a cold July morning in 2024, the bells ring at St. Mary's Anglican Church, where fishing nets and traps surround the altar. It is Sea Sunday, the last service before the start of the new lobster season. It will be the 75th season since the opening of Tristan's first cannery in 1949.

The congregation prays for calm seas and a safe return, as fishermen and cannery workers line up to receive a blessing from Reverend Margaret.

Fishing is deeply ingrained in the island's life and culture. Tristan's inhabitants learned long ago that harnessing the ocean also means protecting it. But it is 82-year-old Lavarello who puts it most succinctly.

“Tristan's ocean is something we must take care of,” he says, watching the wind whip across the blue expanse that stretches to the horizon. “Because without it, we are lost.”

*Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. If you want to read the original article in English, click here.

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