For artisanal fishermen at the Kenyan coast, this is one of the worst times for their trade. A cocktail of hurdles muddy the waters they travel as they make a livelihood. When they are not worrying about being pushed out of business by foreign-owned trawlers that are encroaching on their territory, they are grappling with government-imposed safety rules that virtually bar them from venturing into the ocean.
This is even as it emerged that Kenya is struggling to monitor and intercept foreign vessels fishing in its territorial waters in the Indian Ocean. Last year, the Vessel Monitoring System programme (VMS) operated by Collecte Localisation Satellites, a French company that has been providing satellite data to Kenya for years, stalled over $140,000 in unpaid fees.
Issuance of foreign fishing licences by Kenya has always been done under a cloud of secrecy so much so that efforts by The EastAfrican to get data on vessels permitted into the fishing zone by the government were thwarted severally by the Fisheries Department and senior maritime officials.
Now, local fishermen at the Kenyan Coast have expressed fears of being locked out of fishing in the Indian Ocean, if the government imposes what they call stringent safety rules, arguing they (the rules) will create room for more foreign vessels to exclusively and unfavourably exploit fish in the deep sea…