Chile plans world's biggest marine park to protect Easter Island fish stocks

Local people say way of life is under threat from industrial vessels, and see plan as chance to protect environment and repair relations with mainland

In the pre-dawn gloom in a small harbour on Easter Island, three fishermen fill their boats. Instead of piling nets, they load rocks which they will use to drop a line tens of metres below the swelling waves. The lines will be hauled up hand over hand with their catch, huge yellowfin tuna.

The technique would be recognisable to the fishermen's ancestors who have worked these waters for hundreds of years. But this way of life on one of the world's remotest inhabited islands is under threat, say local people and conservationists, from illegal fishing by industrial vessels that dwarf these tiny boats.