Yesterday, 21 November, marks World Fisheries Day and Greenpeace has called for more action from West African countries to urgently solve the problem of overfishing by properly monitoring its waters.
Vessels arrested for illegally fishing in West African waters are still carrying on with business as usual, said a Greenpeace Africa report released yesterday in Dakar, Senegal to mark the day.
The report, “The Cost of Ocean Destruction”, details how West African fishermen and communities continue to suffer from the consequences of overfishing and illegal fishing in the region and it provides specific recommendations for Governments on how to solve the crisis.
According to the report, it stated in only twenty days, the Greenpeace and fisheries inspectors from Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone and Senegal came across 17 vessels contravening applicable rules.
Eleven of these vessels were arrested for infractions which included involvement in illegal transhipment, fishing in breach of their license conditions, using illegal nets and shark finning.
Six months later, after the infractions, all 17 vessels were still licensed to fish in West African waters, and that in most cases, local authorities were not responding to requests from Greenpeace to clarify what legal steps were taken after the arrests.
“Chinese authorities have ordered provincial authorities to punish the captains of some of the Chinese vessels involved in infringements, while specific subsidies to their operations have also been cancelled. The general lack of information on each case is symptomatic of the lack of transparency and accountability of governments when it comes to fisheries policies…” the report says.
“West African countries keep signing new and opaque fishing agreements with foreign countries without putting in place the means to monitor their activities and sufficiently take the interests of local small-scale fishermen into account. This kind of practice has disastrous consequences for the marine environment, for local fishermen and hence for African communities as well,” said Pavel Klinckhamers, project leader Greenpeace Netherlands.
“The current situation in West Africa is a result of decades of overfishing and inaction, but it is also a result of commitments from West African governments and foreign fishing nations, like China, South Korea and the EU, that were simply never translated into reality.
Coastal communities are the ones paying the price and they cannot wait any longer. African states and foreign fishing nations in the region have to change course and put in place the policies that these communities need in order to survive.”
Greenpeace is calling upon West African governments as well as nations fishing in, or importing seafood from the region, to stand together to protect millions of Africans against the unceasing onslaught of industrial fishing fleets.
They are also demanding that authorities provide follow-up information on fishing vessels and crews that were arrested during a joint patrol by Greenpeace and African fisheries inspectors last spring.
ZJ/21/11/17
By Zainab Joaque
Wednesday November 22, 2017.
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