THE BIG STORY
Due to the subsidies, industrial vessels
can travel farther and fish for much
longer without risking overspending.
Apart from encouraging overfishing
these subsidies create inequality in the
market place.
The major problem with the industrial
fishing vessels is the deadly efficiency of
their fishing operations and their large
by-catch. The nets used can encircle
a school of tuna, and everything else
within them, for over a kilometre.
Broadfield relates: ‘One vessel we had
been observing carried 133 sharks as
by-catch – from one morning of setting
a net. They were dumped on the other
side of the boat. Dead. 133 sharks. That is
the cost of tuna that ends up in Europe,
in America and the rest of the Western
world.’
The West African marine region is rich
in tuna. According to the World Wildlife
Fund it is one of the most diverse and
economically important fishing zones in
the world.
Broadfield shows video footage of a
Spanish ship checked last year. They
found 187 dead blue sharks, which were
caught in the nets as by-catch and whose
fins were cut off, intended for the Asian
market.
Shark fin soup is a delicacy in Asia and
to meet the demand sharks are being
killed in increasingly large numbers. A
third of shark species are so overfished
they risk extinction. The 2013 European
Union Finning Ban was passed to pro-
hibit at-sea removal of fins and dumping
of shark bodies to make room for more
fins. But for this ban to be respected,
at-sea surveillance is essential.
A common practice in the fishing
industry is mid-sea transshipment of
catch from fishing vessels to large refrig-
erated cargo ships which transport the
fish to port. The fishing boats can con-
tinue fishing, reducing their costs.
Broadfield says that at-sea transship-
ment of catch offers companies a means
to avoid regulation in the ports. ‘Legal
vessels offload their catch onto these
refrigerated cargo ships, but illegal
vessels or vessels underreporting or
unregulated are also off-loading their
catch onto these refrigerated fish ships,’
he says. ‘On these ships the catches are
combined and enter the market as legal
fish.’Livelihoods at stake
People living in the coastal regions of
West Africa are heavily dependent on
fishing for their livelihood and for their
animal protein intake. Yet many West
African governments continue selling
profitable fishing permits to foreign
countries.
Senegal has one of the richest fishing
areas in the world but, because they can’t
compete with the presence of foreign
industrial trawlers, its fishers are now
entering the waters of neighbouring
countries, creating conflicts with the local
fishers there. The situation in Senegal is
so bad that its government is negotiat-
ing with the Liberian government to let
its fishers fish there, infuriating Liberian
fisherfolk.
In Senegal, as in other West African
countries, the problem is not just limited
to the coast, as the fish feed the entire
country and support a network of people
who buy, sell, transport and process
them. After a migration slow-down from
Senegal to Spain, the number of fisher-
folk trying to reach Spain’s coast has risen
again.
According to Greenpeace, which reg-
ularly monitors the West African seas
for IUU fishing, African states should
manage their shared resources jointly
and protect the income of their own
fishers. ‘At the same time,’ says Aliou Ba,
political adviser of Greenpeace Africa,
‘we need foreign nations to ensure that
their fishing activities do not undermine
the sustainability of fisheries in the coun-
tries they operate in.’Looking ahead
Sea Shepherd spokesperson Peter Ham-
marstedt is happy to see that IUU fishingis finally on the political agenda and
is beginning to receive the attention it
deserves. ‘However,’ he says, ‘as policy
and legislation is enacted we need to
ensure that enforcement capacity also
expands to ensure that the former is not
just a paper tiger.
‘Boarding and inspections at sea are
critical to obtaining information, such
as paperwork establishing ownership,
fishing logs establishing catch, and docu-
mentation of the crew on board. Tech-
nological solutions like the application
of satellites can assist but do not replace
good old-fashioned police work at sea.’
Sea Shepherd looks for regions where
it can enter long-term partnerships with
governments to help build ecosystem
and biodiversity resilience. The West
African marine region is home to over
1,000 species of fish, as well as dolphins
and whales, five species of endangered
marine turtles, and the largest breeding
colony of monk seals. With the current
level of overfishing, species can’t regen-
erate quickly enough to survive. Sharks
are at the top of the ocean food chain and
are therefore crucial to keep the ocean’s
overall ecosystem healthy.
Fishery experts and ecologists are
predicting a global fisheries collapse by
2048 if no fundamental collective action
is taken to protect ocean ecosystems
against harmful fishing practices. A huge
increase in patrolling capacity, sharing
of information and intelligence between
West African countries, and joint moni-
toring of the West African waters by all
countries combined, could prevent such
a collapse. Putting an end to subsidized
fishing and the creation of more marine
protected areas are an absolute must to
revive ecosystems. O
AÏDA GROVESTINS IS A FREELANCE
JOURNALIST AND FILMMAKER LIVING IN DAKAR,
SENEGAL. AIDAGROVESTINS.COM
1 FAO, ‘The State of the World’s Fisheries and
Aquaculture’, 2016, nin.tl/state-of-world-fisheries28 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
‘They were dumped on the other side of the boat. Dead.
133 sharks. That is the cost of tuna that ends up in
Europe, in America and the rest of the Western world’