Written by Benjamin Joffe-Walt
Published Monday, June 08, 2009
Hundreds of foreign ships are devastating marine environments and stealing from some of the poorest nations in the world, a three-year investigation has found.
The report, which references Somalia, supports the principal grievance of Somali fisherman—many of whom have turned to piracy—that overfishing by foreign vessels has severely damaged Somalia's fish stocks and destroyed their livelihood.
The results of the global investigation, released on Monday by the U.K.-based Environmental Justice Foundation to coincide with World Oceans Day, indicate that illegal fishing in Africa is out of control, causes severe ecological damage and deprives vulnerable coastal communities of their principal source of food and livelihood.
"Artisanal fishing communities throughout the world consistently report decreased numbers and sizes of fish, threatening their livelihoods and basic food security," the report stated. "There is growing evidence that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and its impacts are likely contributing to... the widely reported expansion of piracy in regions."
Foreign fishing operators, sailing under a number of flags, regularly fish illegally in Somali waters, use unscrupulous and illegal fishing practices and fail to report their catches. The Environmental Justice Foundation has referred to Somali as "perhaps the most striking and extreme example of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing."
Somali authorities, local fishermen, civil society organizations and international organizations have complained of foreign vessels illegally fishing or dumping industrial, toxic and nuclear waste off Somali shores since 1991, when President Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted by Ethiopian-backed forces.
Over the 18 years since Barre's fall, Somalia has not had an effective central government able to protect the country's 2000 mile coastline.
In the ensuing chaos, Somali warlords and regional leaders are believed to have participated in the plunder of the country's marine resources, setting up front companies throughout the Middle East and Europe to issue phony fishing licenses to any foreign entity willing to pay the warlords for Somali fishing rights.
In 1999, authorities in the semi-autonomous Puntland region gave the authority to issue fishing licenses to PIDC, an Omani company. Two years later, the PIDC had made over $20 million in profit from fishing operations along the Puntland coast. The Puntland administration claimed PIDC's profits were meant to be split, but when the profits were not shared, the government revoked the PIDC deal.
Puntland is now the epicenter of Somali piracy. Pirates, almost all of them former fisherman, say they took up hijacking foreign fishing operators in the 1990s after they destroyed their livelihood.
In 2005, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) issued a report stating that the agency had a "strong suspicion of illegal dumping of industrial and nuclear wastes along the Somali coast." The FAO claimed around 700 foreign ships were regularly fishing illegally in Somali waters for shark, lobster, dolphins and endangered tuna and sea turtles.
Abdirahman Ibbi, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources in the new Somali National Unity Government, recently claimed there were over 200 foreign fishing operations entering Somali waters illegally, but that the government did not have the resources to monitor the activities of such operators, never mind their effect on Somali fish stocks.
The foreign vessels are believed to not only fish illegally in Somali territory, but also use fishing methods forbidden by international law, including drift nets and underwater explosives, said to have devastated populations of endangered species such as sea-turtles, orca, sharks and baby whales.
Leaders in Somali coastal communities, whose livelihood depends on artisanal fishing, claim Somali fishermen have been violently harassed by foreign trawlers, and have referred to the phenomenon as "economic terrorism".
"Heavily armed foreign vessels come close inshore and compete with small scale, artisan fishermen," the Environmental Justice Foundation has claimed. "They destroy their nets and traps and this has resulted in confrontations and loss of life."
In April the organization claimed that illegal fishing causes losses to the Somali economy in the range of US$94 million a year.
"Action must be taken much earlier to address issues such as illegal fishing before they escalate into the terrible state that we see in Somalia today," said Steve Trent, the director of the organization. "If illegal ‘pirate’ fishing is not ended in these regions, then the consequences could be devastating."
Source: The Media Line
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