Pirate fishing is an enormous threat to Sierra Leone's future development – a threat that urgently needs to be addressed.

EJF documenting an illegal trawler in Sierra Leone © EJF
EJF documenting an illegal trawler in Sierra Leone © EJF
EJF is working in Sierra Leone, a small coastal West African nation emerging from a long civil war.

Although the country is currently listed near the very bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index, effectively ranking it as one of the worst places on earth to live, it is now attempting to recover from the brutal recent conflict.

Currently, 70% of the population lives on less than one dollar a day and 26% live in extreme poverty, with little or no access to any form of healthcare, education, sanitation or clean water and sufficient nutrition.

Sierra Leone has plentiful natural resources and its productive coastal waters are an invaluable source of food and employment for its people. But in recent years foreign pirate fishing vessels have multiplied, taking advantage first of the chaos of the civil war, and more recently of the lack of capacity of the Sierra Leonean government to monitor and control their coastal waters.

As a result it is estimated that the country is now losing almost $29 million every year to pirate fishing operators - a potential developmental income that local communities and the government cannot afford to lose.

 
Sierra Leone is listed by the United Nations Human Development Index 179 out of 179
Sierra Leone is listed by the United Nations Human Development Index 179 out of 179

EJF is working with local communities and the Sierra Leone government to help end pirate fishing

EJF’s campaign and project in the country is working with local communities, grassroots organisations and the Sierra Leone government helping to build their capacity to end pirate fishing.

We provide much needed support to help stop the pirates. In this way we can help ensure the protection of precious and declining fish resources, and provide a small but significant part in Sierra Leone’s recovery and future.

EJF's work in Sierra Leone illustrates all too clearly EJF’s core belief that environmental security is a basic human right and without it the results for poor and vulnerable communities is brutal poverty.
 

Fishing is the life-blood of coastal villages in Sierra Leone, and represents many communities’ only source of income and livelihoods

Pirate Fishing badly affects Sierra Leone's fishermen primary activity
Pirate Fishing badly affects Sierra Leone's fishermen primary activity © EJF

Over 30,000 artisanal fishers and 200,000 ancillary workers (mostly women) are engaged in traditional fish processing and intra-regional trade, and fisheries represent about 10% of GDP. Fish is also the most affordable and widely available protein source, and constitutes a remarkable 80% of animal protein consumed in the country. Fisheries could be contributing significantly to poverty reduction in Sierra Leone, and is particularly significant to food security and the rural poor.

 

Yet local fishers in Sierra Leone repeatedly report to EJF that the extent and impact of pirate fishing is growing and hitting them hard.

Fish are getting smaller, both in numbers and size, and fishers are being forced to go out to sea in ever growing distances and lengths of time to get adequate catches, often in small canoes and pirogues that dangerously were not built for the job.

Out at sea pirate vessels will run through local nets and hooks that might have taken years of saving to buy. Even more seriously, pirate trawlers have been reported to engage in direct conflicts with local fishers - including running down canoes, and attacking with stones and concrete (sometimes with a slingshot), as well as boiling water.

 
Significantly, EJF investigations have shown that many of the pirate vessels are trawlers, a highly destructive form of fishing where heavy nets are dragged along the bottom of the ocean, destroying seabed habitats and scooping up any organism unfortunate enough to get in the way.

Once the nets are pulled up onto the trawler, the pirates sort through the catch for high value species. Anything not considered to have value is called bycatch, and can be as much as 90% of the total. This is simply shovelled dead over the side and can include turtles, cetaceans, seabirds, juveniles, corals, and ‘valueless’ fish species, many of which are key to healthy ecosystems and as a food source to local communities.

As a result, despite a lack of data and the low-impact of artisanal fisheries, it is now estimated that all commercial species in Sierra Leone are fully or over-exploited.
 
Local communities are deeply affected by pirate fishing in Sierra Leone © EJF
Local communities are deeply affected by pirate fishing in Sierra Leone © EJF

Fishing communities in Sierra Leone are increasingly struggling to survive

Depleted fish stocks threaten the ability of fishers to feed themselves and their families, a particular problem as the country has a high dependency ratio - each working person has a high number of others to support financially.

 

Families trying to recover from the civil war are not able to rebuild their homes, or cover the costs of sending their children to school

Debt levels for many are rising, as fishers struggle to raise the money needed to replace lost nets and hooks. Families trying to recover from the civil war are not able to rebuild their homes, or cover the costs of sending their children to school. For more remote communities, health services are provided by mobile medical units; yet many of these operate on a cost-recovery basis - if communities can’t pay, then they are not visited.

EJF is working with the government, grassroots organisations and local communities to find practical, effective and lasting solutions to pirate fishing.

To learn more about why EJF is working to end pirate fishing in Sierra Leone and how you can help to support the campaign please, click here