Pirate Fishing - the Scourge of West Africa

In the coastal waters of West Africa pirate fishing flourishes with impunity.

Countries such as Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Liberia lack the resources to properly police their territorial waters. They are virtually defenceless to prevent the plunder of their precious marine resources, upon which millions of people depend.

Fish are the primary source of animal protein consumed in the West African region, and the fisheries sector directly accounts for up to a quarter of the workforce.

A well-organised group of pirate fishing operators, many based in the port of Las Palmas (Spain), plunder West African waters with total disregard for national fisheries legislation or international conventions.

The EU and East Asia are the major markets for their illegal catches, and EU and East Asian companies are behind many of these pirate operations.

Within the EU consumers are often unwittingly purchasing fish stolen from some of the world's poorest people, losses which are jeopardising food security and ruining the livelihoods of legitimate fishermen. Incursions by trawlers into the inshore areas reserved for traditional, small-scale fishing commonly result in collisions with canoes, the destruction of fishing gear, and even the deaths of local fishermen.

The extent of IUU fishing in some West African territorial waters is truly phenomenal.

Aerial surveys of Guinea's territorial waters found that 60% of the 2,313 vessels spotted were committing offences. Surveys of Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau over the same period found levels of illegal fishing at 24% (of 947 vessels) and 24% (of 926 vessels), respectively.

An investigation by EJF and Greenpeace in 2006 off the coast of Guinea found that over half of the 104 vessels observed were either engaging in or linked to illegal fishing activities. More recent investigations by EJF in Sierra Leone have documented several illegal fishing vessels as close as half a mile from the shore.

Guinea is estimated to lose US$110 million worth of fish to pirate fishing every year, Sierra Leone US$29 million, and Liberia US$10 million - a potential source of developmental income these impoverished States can ill-afford to be without.

Across the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, losses to IUU fishing are estimated to amount to around US$1 billion, which is roughly equivalent to a quarter of Africa's total annual fisheries exports.

When it comes to catching these fish pirates, the odds are very much stacked against the West African authorities.

Efforts to detect and arrest pirate fishing vessels are restricted by a fundamental lack of resources, both financial and technical, and political instability in many countries - both Sierra Leone and Liberia, for example, are recovering from lengthy civil wars. And even when they are caught, penalties do not in many cases serve as sufficient deterrent given the lucrative gains to be made from illegal catches.

Fish pirates also elude detection using a variety of tactics, making the beneficial owners of these illegal operations extremely difficult to identify and penalize. Changes in vessel name and flag are common and some vessels even have dual identities - using one name or flag while fishing in West Africa and a different one when using port facilities and landing catches. For many vessels spotted in the region, there is no information available whatsoever in the public domain.

Another activity that appears to be on the rise is the transshipment of catches to another vessel whilst at sea, rather than directly offloading in ports.
This serves to conceal any connection between the fish and the vessel by the time the fish arrives on the market, meaning the true origin of the catch is unknown.

Transshipping and re-supplying at sea also allow pirate vessels to stay at sea and continue to catch fish rather than transit to port when their holds are full, where they could be confronted with port inspections or control of their activities.