In March 2017, the Greenpeace ship, Esperanza, embarked upon the “Hope in West Africa” ship tour in order to shed light on an environmentally and economically unsustainable situation in some of the world’s most fish fertile waters.
Their findings were disclosed in a recent report, “The Cost of Ocean Destruction”, released on Tuesday 21 November 2017, in Dakar, Senegal. Greenpeace’s Esperanza encountered ten industrial fishing vessels, six of which had their location identification devices turned off.
Three of these vessels were arrested and sent to port for further investigation. These vessels – two Chinese and one South Korean – all had nets with smaller than permitted mesh-size, no logbook and offloading catches without proper authorization.
With local fishermen recently blaming trawlers for the disappearance of a quite a number of fish species over the years, the Fisheries Ministry refuted this claim by saying that it was the illegal nylon fishing nets used by the locals was responsible for the depletion.
Greenpeace Africa said they spent four days conducting a joint surveillance with two fisheries inspectors from the Sierra Leone Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) Unit of the Ministry of Fisheries.
When the South Korean vessel was spotted, it was obscuring its name with a net. The fourth vessel, a 2.6 F/V Eighteen, bottom trawler/shrimper with an Italian flag, was found with 4 kg of shark fins. The vessel was not arrested despite the illicit catch. Even though shark finning is not yet illegal in Sierra Leone, it is still illegal for fishermen operating on vessels flagged to countries of the European Union. The matter has been passed to Italian authorities and the European Commission and is currently being processed by the court in Palermo, Sicily.
A South Korean Demersal trawler, Cona, was inspected because it was illegally covering its name and also had fishing nets with illegal mesh size.
According to the fishery legislation, the mesh size for pelagic and demersal fishing should be 60 millimetres and above, while the fishing net found on board the Cona measured just 51-52 millimetres.
“All of the vessel’s freezers were full and it was drifting in waters too deep for its fishing method. It is likely that the vessel was waiting for a transshipment, which would have been illegal, but this could not be proven. According to local crew on board the vessel had transhipped a part of its catches a week before the inspection…” the report says.
The Sierra Leonean authorities confiscated the fishing license, captain’s passport, and other navigation documents and required the vessel to immediately return to Freetown port for further investigation.
A Chinese mid-water trawler, Fu Hai Yu 1111, was arrested after attempting to escape. They found two hidden illegal nets; one in the freezer and the other in a locked container. The captain tried to muddle the inspection with a brand new legal net.
They had no logbook onboard, which is illegal and makes it impossible to check the catch. They had more than 1,400 boxes of catch in the freezer although the captain claimed at the time that all the catch had been unloaded in Monrovia, Liberia.
However, the vessel didn’t have the required official authorization from the Minister of Fisheries for unloading its catch outside the country at least not on board, which constitutes an infraction of local legislation.
The China Fu Hai Yu 2222 trawler also had illegal mesh size, no logbook and an estimated 3500 boxes was found which did not match the estimation of the government fisheries observer on board. The captain claimed that part of the catch had been unloaded in Liberia, this is however illegal.
Fishing authorities ordered the vessels to return to Freetown for further investigation. “Details on the follow up of the Fu Hai Yu 1111 & 2222 IUU cases are not available despite numerous requests to the Sierra Leonean authorities,” said Greenpeace.
However, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has taken action against these two vessels. A decision has been made to cancel one year’s fuel subsidy for both two vessels and the Fishing Harbor Supervision of Hebei Province to punish the captains of the two vessels according to relevant regulations.
ZJ/22/11/17
By Zainab Joaque
Friday November 24, 2017.