Fishermen from the port of Sisal, located in the municipality of Hunucmá, report that the activity they rely on for subsistence has been severely impacted since the merchant ship “Grande Senegal” ran aground on the Madagascar reef.
The Italian vessel from the Grimaldi Lines left the port of Altamira, Tamaulipas, and on its way to Europe, during the early hours of Sunday, July 23, ravaged 86 linear meters of the marine ecosystem, located 40 kilometers from this fishing community in Yucatán.
From the early days when the ship was spotted grounded on the reef, fishermen denounced that the vibration of its engines drove high-value species away from the area, such as lobster, grouper, snapper, and lionfish, whose capture sustains the families of 2,500 individuals in the municipality of Hunucmá.
The vessel, 211 meters long and over 30 meters wide, remained perched on the rocky structures of the Madagascar reef for 10 days until a couple of foreign-flagged tugboats dragged it to refloat it.
The grounding of the “Grande Senegal” and the maneuvers to free the merchant ship damaged around 4,959 square meters of the reef, according to preliminary reports from the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa).
TYT Newsroom