Recently built in China, these vessels, Hao Yuan Yu 860, 861, 862, 863, 865 and 866, arrived mid-June in Monrovia after failing to undertake fishing operations in Mozambique. This demand follows a trend of licence requests by vessels of Chinese origin in several West African countries, such as Senegal and Ghana
The Liberia Artisanal Fishermen Association (LAFA) and the Grand Cape Mount County and Montserrado County Community Management Associations, issued a joint statement mid-July protesting against the potential issuance of 6 fishing licenses to six Chinese supertrawlers. According to local sources, these trawlers were built in China in 2018 and have the capacity to fish over 12,000 tonnes of fish a year, nearly the double of Liberia’s sustainable catch. “Our waters support local jobs and provide good quality food, but granting these massive supertrawlers fishing licenses would destroy that,” stated Jerry Blamo, President of LAFA and was joined by Charles Simpson, president of the Grand Cape Mount County and Montserrado County Community Management Associations, who added: “These supertrawlers would unfairly compete for the same fish as local fishermen and reverse all of that progress.”
In this West African country, fish is an important source of animal protein (20%) and its fishing communities have been battling to stay afloat since the start of the Covid-19 crisis. The UN has warned that the Coronavirus’ impact could be drastic in countries where people are facing acute-severe food insecurity. According to World Food Programme, approximately 16% of households are food insecure, with 2% severely insecure.
Chinese trawlers competing with local small-scale fisheries
If these trawlers were to receive licences, they would join the six Chinese trawlers of GUOJI company that are already fishing in Liberia under Chinese flag. Most of the species they target are also caught by local artisanal fishermen. According to the EU ex-ante evaluation on the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA) with Liberia, published in March 2020, “all fish [caught by these trawlers, ed] is understood to be marketed locally in frozen form. Species which cannot be sold locally (cephalopods) are exported to China.” One of the GUOJI vessels was arrested in 2018 for illegal fishing and two licences were suspended in 2019 because of the death of a crew.
The arrival of these six supertrawlers mid-June in Monrovia follows a trend of licences requests in several other West African countries by vessels of Chinese origin. For example, in Senegal early March, 52 vessels applied for pelagic and demersal licenses, resources caught by artisanal fishermen and under severe strain. After months of advocacy by a platform of local fisheries stakeholders, the Fisheries Minister announced that he would not issue the licences. Also in Ghana, the government has not yet taken the decision to give three fishing licences to new trawlers from China to which local fishermen are also opposing.
More transparency and scientific data needed
As the current protocol of the EU-Liberia SFPA expires on 8 December 2020, CFFA published recently a position paper highlighting the main issues of the negotiation, including the need for more transparency and better scientific data on Liberian fisheries resources.
A main concern is the fact that Liberia has proposed to expand the SFPA to cover shrimp fishery, which could pose important risks in terms of sustainability and to artisanal fisheries activities, threatening the Inshore Exclusive Zone (IEZ) normally reserved to artisanal fishing. This IEZ is already threatened by a fishing agreement that was signed between Senegal and Liberia in January 2019, allowing up to 2,000 GRT for shrimp trawling (5 vessels) to fish from 4 nautical miles.
Given the lack of reliable fisheries data regarding the state of these stocks and regarding the overall fishing effort, CFFA insisted in its contribution to the EU evaluation on the fact that access, in a future protocol, should continue to be restricted to tuna only. This was somewhat taken into account in the evaluation, which underlines that “The lack of scientific information on the status of demersal stocks in the Liberia’s EEZ suggests exclusion of fishing opportunities for fish, cephalopods or crustaceans under a future Protocol”.
Banner photo: Pierre Gleizes / Greenpeace
SOPERKA, a Senegalese fishing company, in a joint venture with the Spanish company Grupo Pereira, wished to react to our article “Experimental fishing or experimental pillaging in Liberia?” Mr Kandji, Managing Director, Mr Serrano, from the company Pereira, adviser to SOPERKA for its fishing operations, and Mr Perez Bouzada, a lawyer, who defends the interests of the company Pereira, expressed their views on a series of issues raised in the article.