This post is from Dr Sogui Diouf, Veterinary Doctor and former Director of Fisheries
Every year, when the cold season approaches, the Senegalese think about the Russian boats targeting small pelagic resources, which is when these boats come back and ask for fishing permits. The Russian fleet, which once caught 1,500,000 tonnes annually of small pelagic species along the Northwest coast of Africa, now only catches 400,000 tonnes.
In 2010, Russia, with the complicity of our then Minister of Fisheries, was granted permission to catch our coastal pelagic resources. But in April 2012, the new government ordered this fleet to cease its activities in Senegalese waters.
In 2013, a fishing agreement was signed between Russia and Guinea Bissau, offering Russia the opportunity to operate in the common maritime area between Senegal and Guinea-Bissau – once Russian vessels were in the common area, it made it easy for them to make illegal incursions in the waters of Senegal. This is how the vessel Oleg NAYDENOV came to be arrested in late 2013 for fishing in Senegalese waters without permission.
This year, we were wondering what strategy Russia was going to use...
Then we learned that, in September 2014, a Dakar based trading company, heading up a joint venture operation, had applied for ten licenses to fish for small pelagics from the Ministry of Fisheries, as a way to revive the fish processing company Africamer. Africamer was founded in 1979, and processed 20,000 tons of fish annually, 85% of which was exported to Europe. With a fleet of 17 freezer trawlers, it employed 2,500 people. Between 2005 and 2008, Africamer, which was the largest Senegalese company in the fishing sector, got into difficulties due to management errors. In 2011, after several short lived attempts to revive the company, Africamer was put into liquidation.
By coincidence, at end of 2013, the representative of the Russia’s Federal Agency of Fisheries had filed a request along very similar lines to the office of the President of the Republic: fishing licenses for 10 trawlers, operating 6 months per year to catch 100,000 tons of small pelagic species, for 5 years. The request also mentioned the revival of Africamer. The similarities are so striking that one wonders if the 2014 demand from the Senegalese operator did not actually come from Russia’s Federal Agency of Fisheries.
In addition to the reopening of Africamer and the 10 licenses, the request from the Senegalese operator also proposed to create a shipyard and an aquaculture site. In order to realize this ambitious programme, the operator came up with a completely unrealistic proposal to invest only 11 billion FCFA (+ - EUR 17 million). Moreover, the resumption of the activities of Africamer would require a supply of fresh products to the factory – but products caught by the Russian boats benefitting from the ten licenses are frozen on board and packed at sea….
This proposal for a resumption of the Africamer factory is merely a ruse. The promises to recruit workers for Africamer will not materialize because products already frozen and packaged are not suitable to supply such a processing factory. The only way that Russia has found to bring back its fishing vessels to Senegalese waters is to use a lie.
At stake are our food security and our jobs. In fact, fleets of foreign super trawlers fishing in the region compete directly with the artisanal fishing sector over access to the sardinella; a single stock that migrates between Morocco and Guinea Bissau passing through Mauritania and Senegal.
Sardinella occupies a very important place in Senegal fisheries, whether looked at from the landings, local consumption, jobs or exports. Some 60% of the 400,000 tons of the Senegalese artisanal fishery landings are made of sardinella. Nearly 12,000 Senegalese artisanal fishermen live only from the sardinella fishery. In addition, many related activities (artisanal processing and distribution) associated with the sardinella fishery are characterized by low barriers to entry in terms of capital, qualification and know-how and employ thousands of people. The importance of women in the artisanal processing sector is a favorable factor for poverty-reduction policies.
In terms of food security, sardinella is the most accessible source of animal protein in terms of price and quantity. Today, many Senegalese families can only be assured of one meal a day - lunch based on rice and sardinella.
Currently, the state of the sardinella resources is worrying. The FAO/CECAF working group held in June 2013, in Nouadhibou (Mauritania), found that, as in previous years, sardinella stocks are overexploited; fishing effort must be substantially reduced.
Senegalese artisanal fishers, aware of the overexploitation of sardinella, have already introduced restrictions including measures to prohibit the fishing, the marketing and the processing of juveniles sardinella, as well as temporary fishing closures.
Given this situation, we must, today, reserve sardinella for the artisanal fishing sector, while developing the measures already adopted for the regulation of the fishing effort on this resource.
It is a question of food security and social stability.
Dr. Sogui Diouf
Veterinary Doctor