When fuel costs eat the catch

Captain Raúl Mendoza's alarm sounds at 04:30. By 05:15 he is at the fuel dock in Puerto Azul, watching the pump meter climb. Twenty-three gallons this morning—enough to reach the deeper grounds off Punta Negra and back. At current prices, that is 187 florins. His average catch last week was twelve kilos of grouper and snapper. At cooperative rates, that grosses roughly 240 florins. The margin has narrowed to a whisper.

Mendoza has captained small boats for thirty-two years. He knows the reef calendar, the weather patterns, the depth contours where the fish move with the season. What he is learning now is a different kind of navigation: the arithmetic of survival when fuel costs devour the profit before the nets are cast.

The tension is not new to Costa Mar's fishing cooperatives, but it has sharpened through the summer. Diesel prices at the dock have climbed eight percent since April, driven by global demand and the cost of the tanker runs that supply the peninsula. The cooperative's catch quotas have not risen to match. On a Tuesday in July, Mendoza sits in the cooperative's office in Puerto Azul and talks through the week ahead.

"Some mornings I calculate whether it is worth leaving the dock," he says. "The fish are there. But the fuel is expensive, and the quota limits how much I can bring back. I do the math and I think: stay home, repair the nets, wait for prices to move."