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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:45 am
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Results for illegal fishing (west africa)
1 results foundAuthor: Environmental Justice Foundation Title: Dirty Fish: EU Hygiene Standards facilitates illegal fishing in West Africa. Summary: • Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) or ‘pirate’ fishing is devastating marine environments and stealing from some of the poorest people of the world. IUU is the term given to any fishing activity that contravenes national or international laws, such as: banned fishing gears; targeting protected species; operating in protected or reserved areas or at times when fishing is prohibited; or operating without any form of permit or license to fish. IUU fishing vessels cut costs to maximise profits and use a variety of means, including ‘flags of convenience’ to avoid detec- tion and penalty for wrongdoing. • Globally, pirate fishing accounts for US$10 – 23.5 billion a year, representing between 11 and 26 million tons of fish. It is driven by the enormous global demand for seafood, and threatens the future of world fisheries. The impacts are social, economic, and environmental, and in many cases IUU operators specifically target poor developing countries. • Investigations by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) have demonstrated the direct links between pirate fishing in the West African nation of Sierra Leone, the illegal operators, and the Asian and European seafood markets, the largest in the world. • South Korean and Chinese vessels dominate the pirate fishery in West Africa, in clear contravention of those countries’ international responsibilities to ensure that the vessels flagged to them operate legally. • Investigations show that many South Korean and Chinese pirate fishing vessels carry import numbers designated by the European Commission, specifically the Food and Veterinary Office of the Directorate-General of Health and Consumers (DG Sanco). The DG Sanco number infers that the vessel has met supposedly strict EU hygiene standards, and is therefore allowed to export fish to the European Union. EJF investigations reveal that fish is handled and packed in extremely unhygienic conditions; • There appears to be no coordination between the EU’s DG Sanco and the Directorate-General of Fisheries and Mari- time Affairs (DG Mare) to ensure that known IUU vessels are identified, and then barred and/or eliminated from DG Sanco lists. Vessels that fish illegally do so to minimize costs associated with legal fishing methods. Lack of official licenses and proper safety equipment, unsanitary conditions and appalling crew conditions have all been documented by EJF aboard IUU vessels. • Sierra Leone is desperately vulnerable to pirate fishing - as a result of recent civil war, struggling economy and dependency on fish. 70% of the population live on less than one dollar a day and the country is ranked by the United Nations as bottom of 179 countries on its Human Development Index, one of the poorest in the world. Foreign illegal fishing vessels are stealing around US$29million of fish from Sierra Leone each year; in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, the total value of illegal fish is approximately US$1billion. Fishing is a vital source of income for the Sierra Leonean men and women – around 230,000 people are engaged in traditional fish capture, and fisheries represents around 10% of GDP. Fish is also a crucial component of food security, contributing 80% of the total animal protein to the country. • IUU fishing is devastating marine environments – bottom trawl nets catch everything in their path, and only those species considered commercially valuable are kept; the remainder, around 75% of the total, is discarded dead. IUU is a growing threat to marine species including turtles and sharks, as well as commercial fish species and juvenile fish needed to replenish stocks. Details: London: Environmental Justice Foundation, 2009. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 21, 2013 at:http://ejfoundation.org/sites/default/files/public/report-dirty%20fish.pdf Year: 2009 Country: Africa URL: http://ejfoundation.org/sites/default/files/public/report-dirty%20fish.pdf Shelf Number: 127685 Keywords: Illegal Fishing (West Africa)Maritime CrimeWildlife Crime |