The West African country has bought equipment for a Fisheries Monitoring Center with the SFPA sectoral support funds. Gambian fishers call for more transparency, including the publication of the list of fishing licenses which would facilitate participatory surveillance
A new Fisheries Monitoring Center (FMC) has been launched in Banjul, using the EU-Gambia Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA) sectoral support funds. In an article in the Gambian newspaper The Point, the journalist quoted The Gambia Department of Fisheries representative saying that fishing operator agents and vessel owners who infringe the country’s fisheries regulations “will face the full force of the law.”
During the launch of the FMC, the Director of Fisheries and Water Resources, Anna Mbenga Cham, emphasized that Gambian waters are plagued with vessels that infringe the prohibited zones and use wrong mesh sizes in contravention of the laws. She also explained that the new Fisheries Monitoring Centre (FMC) is equipped with a VMS system, allowing to have round the clock maritime surveillance via a secure, web-based interface. Other equipment - computers, transponders-, have also been purchased with the sectoral support fund, and a five-day training has been carried out for the activation of the transponders.
EU SUPPORT TO THE FIGHT AGAINST IUU IN THE GAMBIA
When the SFPA was signed in July 2019, a key priority for the use of the sectoral support was indeed to help The Gambia “develop responsible and sustainable fishing activities,” including for fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) and fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This focus was welcome, as illegal fishing activities have been proliferating in The Gambia in the last decade, including the case of an EU trawler, part of a fleet of Italian trawlers fishing in The Gambia, arrested in 2015, for fishing with the illegal fishing gear.
In November 2020, a Gambian newspaper reported that the EU had paid its yearly sectoral support contribution of €275,000 and that part of these SFPA funds had been used to buy equipment for the Fisheries Monitoring Centre. Since the signing of the agreement, the EU has been supporting the Gambia to build up its surveillance capacity in order to effectively patrol and monitor its territorial waters, according to a statement from the EU ambassador. Apart from funds from the sectoral support being used for the FMC, in 2019, the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) trained twenty Gambian fisheries inspectors on control techniques at sea and at landing as part of the PESCAO project.
The publication of an updated list of licenced vessels would allow Gambian artisanal fishers to help identify IUU activities by industrial trawlers, suggested Mr. Dawda Foday Saine, Secretary General of CAOPA. Photo: Mamadou Aliou Diallo.
TRANSPARENCY AND PARTICIPATORY SURVEILLANCE
Mr Dawda Foday Saine, from the National Association of Artisanal Fisheries Operators (NAAFO) and Secretary General of the African Confederation of Artisanal Fisheries Organizations (CAOPA) welcomed these initiatives. However, he also highlighted that, to efficiently deter IUU activities in Gambian waters, it was also vital to have more transparency in Gambian fisheries, particularly with the regular publication of up-to-date lists of licensed vessels, the list of infringements, and effectively enforce laws and apply fines to those not respecting them. This request for more transparency in the Gambia maritime fisheries echoes the demand from CAOPA to countries of the region to follow the example of Mauritania and apply the Fisheries Industry Transparency Initiative (FiTI) standards.
The EU-Gambia SFPA supports “Participatory monitoring in the fight against IUU fishing” (section 3 on control and inspection), which calls on EU vessels to report the presence of any vessels in the Gambian fishing zone engaged in activities which may constitute IUU fishing. If the list of licenses vessels was made public, Gambian artisanal fishers could also help in this task and identify which industrial trawlers are engaged in activities which may constitute IUU fishing in the Gambian fishing zone.
Banner photo: Gunjur, The Gambia, by Mamadou Aliou Diallo.
Although the protocol does not allow European fleets to fish for small pelagics because they are overexploited, at least 4 European vessels have reportedly reflagged to Guinea-Bissau and are fishing for these species in the region, jeopardising the region's food security and competing with small-scale fisheries.