One night in early April, Musa Jammeh was out fishing off the Gambia’s Atlantic coast when he discovered a trawler had destroyed his nets while fishing illegally.
Jammeh tried to get close enough in his wooden canoe to take the vessel’s registration number, so he could report the incident to the fisheries department and apply for compensation, but he and his crew were attacked and driven away.
We saw a big ship coming towards us. They pumped hot water on us so that we didn’t get closer to them. You could hear dogs barking from the ship which was scary. I was really sad because I lost my net to people who do not care about us, our fish and our lives, he tells China Dialogue.
Jammeh and his crew of 15 youths are unable to work until the nets are replaced: They are all jobless now. My family is suffering so badly. We have no justice and we never expect justice.
The incident occurred a few months after a patrol campaign by the NGO Sea Shepherd Global, in collaboration with the Gambian government. It highlighted the complex challenges the country faces in combatting illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing.
The Gambia’s coastline is plagued by industrial trawlers that breach regulations to fish inside a nine-nautical-mile-wide area reserved for artisanal fishers. The trawlers are taking vast amounts of sardinella and other small pelagic species that provide a crucial source of protein.
The Gambia has had a bigger problem with incursions into restricted areas than other countries we have worked with, says Peter Hammarstedt, Sea Shepherd director of campaigns. It’s ecologically important to deter illegal fishing close to the shore. It’s where fish are spawning and where the biodiversity is, which is critical to artisanal fishers.
As China Dialogue reported last November, the Gambia’s food security is under threat from the over-exploitation of small pelagic fish driven by the rapid growth in fishmeal processing in the sub-region. There are more than 50 factories operating along the coasts of Mauritania and Senegal, including three in the Gambia that are owned by Chinese companies.
Fishmeal is one of the main drivers for IUU fishing in Gambia, says Dr Dyhia Belhabib, principal investigator, fisheries, at Ecotrust Canada. Just one trawler can have a significant negative impact on fish stocks, but the monitoring is not there.
Like many countries in the region, the Gambia has little capacity to know what is happening on its waters. We have a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, but the patrol vessels we have currently do not have the capacity to do the surveillance operations. They only go out for 60 miles, so they cannot protect our water, explains James Gomez, minister for fisheries and water resources.
China Dialogue Trust