Ecuador and THE SHARK’S ADVOCATE

For Hugo Echeverria, the Ecuadorian lawyer at the forefront of these cases, the battle is daily. And he doesn’t hesitate to dive in! We meet him during a dive in the turquoise waters of the Galapagos Islands, in the company of his latest clients… the sharks. The lawyer confesses that he draws the energy from such dives to fight his difficult legal battles. He is currently defending the sharks in a lawsuit against a Chinese fishing company. The area is in principle protected, since it’s a natural park. Yet Hugo tells us how two years ago, a Chinese fishing boat came to catch 6000 sharks. Even though it was boat specialized in tuna fishing: a kind of giant fridge where fish are skinned and refrigerated as soon as they’re caught, belonging to a fleet of a thousand boats. The captain and crew are now awaiting trial in the Quito prisons. Their company faces a 6 million Euro fine for capturing a protected species. Hugo trains the local authorities in apprehending the boats they pass in the protected waters of the Galapagos in the most irreproachable way possible. Fishing companies often succeed in having trials quashed for procedural errors at the time of arrest. But the fight for the rights of nature is far from won, even in Ecuador, this forerunner country. Multinationals view with displeasure the emergence of a right that calls into question their freedom to exploit natural resources. In 2015, Ecuador obtained 9.5 billion Euros from the oil giant Chevron, whose subsidiary Texaco had polluted 1,500 km2 of the Amazon rainforest for 30 years. Following the conviction, the multinational left the country without paying its fine, and managed to get the judgement overturned.