14ymedio, Havana, March 5, 2024 — The Government has definitively eliminated the obligation for private fishermen to contract with a State company authorized for commercialization to receive a fishing license. This resolution, published on Monday in the Official Gazette, is a measure that was taken provisionally in 2022, but it leaves out the star product of the Cuban seas: the lobster.
The text details that the species that can be freely fished are “fish, tuna, oysters, clams, crab and marine shrimp, in this case, outside the coastal lagoons, in the waters of the Island platform.” Meanwhile, marketing must be subject to the decisions of local governments in each case, and there will be a “quarterly reconciliation process” between the National State Inspection Office and the fishermen on the catches made by delivering an affidavit.
The current resolution puts an end to the limbo in which the fishermen had remained since the beginning of 2024, since the previous one ended on December 31, 2023. That document was received with enthusiasm at the time by the population, who did not cease to point out the delay in relaxing some limitations that, in their opinion, tied the hands of thousands of workers in the fishing sector. The consequence was the unprecedented situation of barely any fish to eat in a country surrounded by the sea.
But despite this good step, the faint liberalization has not had any visible effect in the year and a half that it has been approved. According to data from the Ministry of Food, fish consumption in Cuba fell fro