Trawlers threaten fishing livelihood
Samba Diallo must travel more than 32 kilometres out into the Atlantic in his wooden boat in order to fish.
On a beach jammed with pirogues, the brightly painted wooden boats of West Africa, a crew of fishermen sing as they haul their vessel from the sea: “Thanks to God we have returned alive.”
While Mauritania is almost entirely a desert country, along its coast are some of the richest fishing grounds in the world. But canoe-like pirogues are little match for the enormous European and Asian trawlers that also ply these waters, pulling enormous hauls of fish and other seafood from the deep ocean.
Local fishermen complain that their catch is dwindling, and they must travel far out into the Atlantic, risking collisions with trawlers and other dangers at sea, in order to earn a living.
“Their boats are so big and they can’t see us,” said Samba Diallo, a fisherman. Diallo, 42, who has been fishing since he was a teenager, said his catch has been declining for years. He and four crewmates travel more than 32 kilometres from shore in a small boat, staying on the water for days and sleeping in shifts.
“It is a lot more difficult to find fish,” he said. “We have to go further and further.”
Fishing is a critical part of the economy of Mauritania, an overwhelmingly poor country, as it is in neighbouring Senegal and Guinea. International trawlers from countries including China, South Korea and Russia are drawn to the area because of declining fish stocks back home.
But conservationists warn that rapacious fishing practices there are threatening fisheries and food supply to a staggering degree. West Africa loses at least $1.3 billion (U.S.) a year from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, according to a 2014 report from the Africa Progress Panel.
Greenpeace warned in May that “rogue” fishing vessels from China were pillaging the fisheries of West Africa. A two-year investigation by the group found that at least 74 boats owned by Chinese companies were fishing in prohibited West African waters and falsifying their gross tonnage.
On a good day, the hundreds of pirogues operating out of the ports of Nouakchott, Mauritania’s capital, as well as Nouadhibou, the main commercial centre, take a tiny fraction of the fish caught by the big international trawlers. According to a Greenpeace estimate, it would take 56 traditional pirogues a year to catch the volume of fish netted and processed by one of the super-trawlers in a single day.
Mauritania’s president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, announced a new initiative in January, during his term as African Union chairman, that is aimed at improving the accountability of the fishing industry.
While the Fisheries Transparency Initiative has received praise, some question whether it will receive the broad political support needed to be effective.
Diallo, the fisherman, said that he sometimes sees inspection boats out on the water. But more often he witnesses trawlers fishing where they aren’t supposed to. “The government should check more regularly,” he said.
“The boats coming to fish aren’t just taking the fish they need. They take other fish, too,” Diallo added. “They are extinguishing the resources by this way of fishing.”