With sovereignty over the Western Sahara still in dispute, this is a politically significant catch.

The uncertainty about the future of this vast, mainly desert territory in the northwest corner of Africa puts a dampener, for now, on investment in tourism for winter sun-seekers, officials in Laayoune admit.

But against the backdrop of diplomatic stalemate, as the United Nations strives for a solution to the dispute between Morocco and the Polisario separatist movement, Morocco is keen to show that the regional economy is developing apace.

The fishing sector is one area where the authorities can point to significant growth, always under the firm guiding hand of the central government.

SOUTHERN-MOST SUBJECTS

Claiming Western Sahara as its historic "southern provinces," Morocco controls most of the territory.

The Polisario movement, based across the border in Algeria, sees the future of the area as an independent state, governed by its Saharan Arab inhabitants, known as Sahrawis.

Since a 1991 cease-fire, successive U.N. initiatives aimed at ending a dispute which dates from 1975, and asserting the Sahrawis' right to "self-determination," have failed.

Advocates of independence for Western Sahara stress the territory's mineral wealth, with the phosphate mine at Boukra near Laayoune, and possible offshore oil reserves.

But the Boukra mine is loss-making and subsidized by the Office Cherifien des Phosphates' more important phosphate production near Khouribga, according to officials. It is fishing that generates new jobs and export earnings. Western Sahara fish products now account for up to seven percent of Morocco's total export earnings of 85.6 billion dirhams ($9.80 billion).

Morocco declined to renew a fishing accord with the European Union which until the late 1990s had allowed foreign boats into Moroccan waters. It has instead spent heavily since then on port infrastructure in Western Sahara, as though consolidating its hold on the territory.

Like all other businesses in Western Sahara, the sardine canning businesses, and plants processing octopus for Japanese dinner tables, pay no taxes except for payroll contributions.

They also benefit from the subsidies in the prices of fuel, power and water with which Morocco woos its southern-most subjects, who account for less than two percent of the kingdom's 29.6 million population.

Local investors are often Sahrawi notables who see the territory's future with Rabat rather than the Polisario and who play a prominent role in the local economy. A little over a generation ago, the Saharawis' lifestyle revolved around camel and goat rearing. Fish did not figure at all in the Sahrawi diet and even today few Sahrawis work directly with fish.

But among new investors, the favorable conditions for businesses can sometimes encourage over-hasty decisions.

OCTOPUS FOR THE JAPANESE

Lining the walls of the conference room in the Laayoune governor's headquarters, photos showed a visit to Western Sahara by Morocco's King Mohammed.

Some 40 men, and one woman wrapped in the colored veil worn in Western Sahara, listened to Morocco's Fisheries Minister Taieb Rhafes. He had flown down from Rabat to explain why he was extending a ban on octopus fishing.

With him were representatives of Moroccan banks whose loans to local investors had encouraged a proliferation of octopus-freezing plants around Dakhla, from a handful in 1997 to 90 in 2003. The octopuses have been almost wiped out by over-fishing, the minister explained. It takes only three months to have an octopus-freezing plant up and running, said an official.

At Laayoune port, the fishermen are not Sahrawis, but come from Moroccan ports further north - Agadir, Essaouira and Safi. A spontaneous movement of sardines southwards, traced by Morocco's fisheries research institute, the INRH, coincided with the development of infrastructure in the Western Sahara. The fishermen followed the fish southwards, bringing their expertise with them.

Moroccan officials have no separate figures for employment among Sahrawis and non-Sahrawis. "There are no two communities here," only Moroccan citizens, Laayoune Governor Mohamed Rharrabi told Reuters.

With the sea-faring culture far-removed from the traditional Sahrawi lifestyle, it seems fishing will provide only some of the jobs needed in the Laayoune region, where unemployment at the last census was 40 percent among 20 to 24 year-olds.