Mr. Khalid Hassan M.A Al-Hamadi, Chief Executive Officer, Ooredoo Maldives
Dear Mr. Al-Hamadi,
Have you read Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick? How about Ali Tabrizi’s 2021 documentary Seaspiracy? Have you watched it, sir?
I’m sure you must have done both. But it looks like you have missed out on something very important
that has happened to the world in the 170 years between Morby-Dick and
Seaspiracy. But that’s ok, sir. Happens to all of us. That’s why I have
chosen to write this letter to you.
Morby-Dick was about the obsessive quest of Captain Ahab to take revenge on a giant sperm whale.
The novel was a product of the era of a whaling frenzy. That was the
time when hundreds of ships went out and culled whales by the millions.
Nobody raised an eyebrow about what was the largest cull of any animal
in terms of total biomass in human history. In fact, people rejoiced it.
They celebrated the whaling captains as heroes.
Today, 170 years later, culling even a single whale creates a huge public outcry. The world, especially educated young people, have moved very far from the mindset of the whaling industry era. Even by 1930s Ernest Hemingway could sit smiling beside a trophy lion he shot dead and be considered a hero. But today educated young people are outraged by that mindset. Now we make heroes out of conservationists
- the Jane Goodalls, David Attenboroughs and the Ali Tabrizis of this
world. The world has moved from the mindset of EXPLOITATION to
CONSERVATION, sir!
Sir, in this day and age it is not right for an international company like Ooredoo to run an annual marketing and publicity campaign around the idea of exploitation!
You say your annual sport fishing event Ooredoo Mas Race “brought back one of the finest traditions in Maldivian culture, and contributed towards creating a love for fishing among young people.”
Yes, sir. As a people whose livelihoods depended entirely on subsistence fishing since time immemorial, it is understandable that fishing has always been a part of our tradition. But as for your stated objective of “creating a love for fishing among young people” you are dead wrong, sir. You need to give some serious thinking into what you are doing here.
Do you seriously think there is such a shortage of “love of fishing” in this country that an international company like Ooredoo needs to use its resources to create an annual marketing event around it? In fact all the indications are that we have already gone way overboard with our “love of fishing” that we have passed all the ecological thresholds of sustainability especially with regard to reef fish species.
The tradition of fishing in the Maldives used to be very sustainable, sir. For over a thousand
years our people ate surprisingly few species of fish. Common tropical fish and seafood varieties
such
as groupers, spiny lobsters, eels, sea-cucumbers etc were not on our
menu. Our people’s diet consisted largely of surface swimming juvenile
tuna and a few varieties of reef fish – a very sustainable practice even
by modern sustainability standards.
It was only what we did in the last few decades that took us down the path of ecological disaster. I know that your company played no part in the recent reclamation of islands for tourism
and had no role in the corruption, greed, short-sightedness and changes
in lifestyle that our people have experienced during this time. And I
also know there’s little your company could do in terms of regulating sports fishing. But I am sure if you did a little bit of reading on the subject you would be able to find out how we fished out all the groupers and sea cucumbers, finned most of the big sharks and sold them to the Chinese. How we hunted all the spiny lobsters, giant clams and all the other edible crustaceans and molluscs. How we acquired a taste for so many things that we didn’t really have to eat. How we dived to the remotest corners of our reefs to catch the most colourful of the little gobies, clownfish, surgeonfish, parrotfish and other ornamental fish and exported them – of course, to die on the way or somewhere in an aquarium halfway across the globe. How every weekend thousands of our men
went ‘night fishing’ in hundreds of boats making it the most popular
national pastime until all the big snappers, groupers and jacks were
almost fished out. And then sir, as if that wasn’t enough, we reclaimed
islands – dredged and filled up entire reef ecosystem that took millions
of years to grow. And then we dumped millions of tons of plastic and
toxic garbage into the sea.
I am sure you or your company
Ooredoo wouldn’t want to be a part of the sad story of how we lost the
most beautiful things this country once had almost everywhere, on every
single one of our 1200 beautiful islands.
Sir, don’t get me wrong. I am not against our people fishing. And I have no problem with your
company associating with our real fishermen. In fact I am happy that you have chosen Zuvan
Masveriyaa Hassan Sajin as your brand ambassador in Maldives. He is the archetypal torchbearer
of the young generation of fishermen carrying forth our tradition of
sustainable pole and line fishery. Sir, I believe, you as a gentleman
with such diverse international exposure would be able to make a
distinction between the fishery Hassan Sajin represents and the
ecological disaster of indiscriminate sport fishing that you are
encouraging with your Mas Race annual fishing event. But if you
really have to go ahead with the event, I urge you to please get your
participants to catch and release. That’s the least you could do.
Celebrating the biggest fish caught, giving awards to the most number of fish caught is a thinking
from a bygone era, sir. In todays civilized world people no longer sit
smiling beside dead trophy lions, antelopes and giraffes. Felling and
standing on top of a giant sequoia tree stump for a picture doesn’t make
you a hero now. Instagramming a selfie with a dead Napoleon wrasse you
caught will now certainly cause a public outcry from educated young
people.
I recently followed on Instagram how celebrity marine biologist and shark conservationist Ocean Ramsey inspired young women to swim with the tiger sharks on the reef of Fuahmulah. I
hope I would see the day a young Maldivian woman from Fuahmulah achieve
worldwide fame in tiger shark conservation around the house reefs of
her island.
Rafael Caballero was recently named Underwater
Photographer of the Year 2022 for his photo "Dancing with the Giants of
the Night”. When the news item of his picture of whale sharks feeding on
nocturnal plankton in the Maldives was featured in the local Mihaaru
news, I noticed a lot of people making comments saying that the picture
should have been taken by a Maldivian. As a Maldivian I too feel that a
fellow Maldivian should have taken that picture. It would’ve given me
such a sense of pride. But then let’s ask why a Spaniard got to take
that picture in the Maldives? I know it’s like asking why a Genoese man was the first to sail to America or why a Portuguese man was the first to sail around the Cape of Good Hope instead of a Maldivian.
I’m sure you would agree that it all boils down to the mindset. If we can work on changing the mindset of our people we could make a young Maldivian the next Rafael Cabalero. We could have
a young Maldivian create the next big Netflix documentary to dwarf Ali
Tabrizi’s Seaspiracy or have our very own Fuahmulah native Ocean Ramsey.
The big question is, are you willing to make Ooredoo part of the new mindset of conservation or be stuck in the exploitative and destructive mindset of Captain Ahab, sir?
Yours Sincerely,
Call me Ibraheem
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