Plutarch wrote in Roman times that “there are loves so beautiful that they justify all the follies they commit.” The Greek philosopher would have liked to sing the epic of this 39-year-old woman from Empordà , MÃriam Artacho, a patron of a fishing boat based in Arenys de Mar (Maresme), who committed the madness of obtaining the title of skipper and joining a fishing boat. She fishes so that her husband could carry on the family tradition, despite himself having a serious eye condition.
During these six years at sea, MÃriam has become aware of the poor state the Mediterranean is in and actively collaborates with entities such as Ecoembes and Ecoalf, non-profit companies that recycle the waste collected by fishermen. “Those who make decisions in fishing should join a boat” and could know “what it feels like when you clean an anglerfish and that we remove plastic from its guts.” If so, they would also repudiate the stigmas attached to fishermen, he suggests, while pointing to a banner with the slogan “We are not thieves” that hangs from the building of the fishermen’s association, in protest of the restrictions that the administrations place on professionals. . “We are the first interested in protecting the sea”, and for this reason they abide by the impositions and cuts in fishing gear or to carry out biological closures. “But I recognize that every time they drown us more” .
Artacho signed up as a fishing patron with her husband and guarantees that she has ended up “falling in love with the seaâ€. MÃriam’s is a story of courage and overcoming to save her family. With her husband, Isaac, whom she married at the age of 20 and has two daughters, they formed the typical wealthy marriage. He was the skipper of a fishing boat, following the family tradition in the port of Roses, and she was a forestry technician in the Torroella de Montgrà Town Hall (Empordà ).
Her peaceful life was cut short when her husband was diagnosed with glaucoma that prevented him from renewing his skipper’s title, and he was on the verge of never being able to embark again. It was then that MÃriam, to prevent her beloved from falling into a deep depression far from the sea where she had grown up with her entire family, decided to take her title from her. “Isaac didn’t sleep for a week when they told him he couldn’t renew his skipper title.”
She had always heard that “women did not go to sea”, but the “courage fisherwoman” ignored the old sea lions and earned the title of fishing skipper, which has also earned her the admiration of her peers. . But it wasn’t easy, she recalls. “The first day of class I started crying when the teacher started talking about engine pistons.†But after three months “he was already disassembling a boat motor.”
MÃriam and Isaac bought a trawler, the Mariano, which they changed the name to Mini One as it is a small fishing boat, about twelve meters long. “I have to admit that I am from the mountains and I did not know if I would get dizzy in the sea, but it is clear that what I needed was to maintain contact with nature, which ends up putting you in your placeâ€. Every day they move from the Empordà to the Maresme, once the drastic change in life has been overcome. “From seeing each other after finishing work we have gone on to be together all dayâ€, on some occasions, with situations of maximum tension.
In the port of Arenys everyone knows her. “I thought that because I was a woman they would marginalize meâ€, but it was the opposite. First they helped me with the boxes and the car, but when they saw that I could do it on my own, they considered me one more and stopped doing it, â€she recalls with a laugh.
The Mini One arrives at the port of Arenys de Mar shortly after 3:30 p.m. with a good catch. While her husband stays on board cleaning and arranging the gear after unloading the boxes of fish, MÃriam exudes optimism and does not lose her wide smile as she carries the heavy cart to the auction market. Once the catch is invoiced, she takes a large bucket full of waste to the Ecoembes container. “In three months we collect about eighty kilos of rubbish, she explains,†she explains. We find everything: tires, pipes, tables, mattresses…â€. However, she qualifies that it is not people who throw the waste into the sea, but “most of it comes from land, washed away by floods”, for which she calls for more awareness “in cleaning the streams and mouths”.
