West Africa: illegal fishing, the black hole in the seas

In terms of human dimensions, illegal fishing in West Africa has several far-ranging implications for small-scale fishers and communities

Fish crimes in the global oceans

This study provides a global assessment of the linkages between observed fisheries-related offenses across the world’s oceans between 2000 and 2020. We analyze data from the largest existing repository with 6853 events reporting offenses across 18 fishing-related categories, including illegal fishing, human rights abuses, and smuggling. We find that at least 33% of all recorded offenses are associated with 450 industrial vessels and 20 companies originating from China, the EU, and tax haven jurisdictions. We observe links between various types of offenses for 779 vessels, with such “transversal criminality” involving 2000 offenses and crimes globally. This study demonstrates the ability to identify offenders and patterns of behaviors threatening fisheries sustainability at a global level and countries most vulnerable to transversal criminality. In light of concerns for widespread underreporting and impunity, we call for greater information sharing, interagency cooperation, and stringent enforcement to bring to account major offenders

Technical Change, price arbitrage and price flexibility; the case of Lobster holding in Québec compared to Eastern Canada

Lobster (Homarus americanus) ranks first in Canada’s fisheries, but Quebec lobster represents only 6% of eastern Canada landings. During the peak of the fishing season in Quebec as elsewhere, supply is at its maximum and price is the lowest. For this reason, there has been considerable interest in Quebec in developing holding technologies that allow for price arbitrage over time. Such techniques already exist in other parts of Eastern Canada, but are less developed in Québec. This paper looks at the likely impacts of fishermen’s associations in Québec adopting lobster holding technologies that enable price arbitrage. We performed a technical and financial analysis that compared several alternative configurations of lobster holding technologies for Grande Rivière Québec. Of the configurations presented, a technique was proposed which seemed to maximize discounted profits. However, these results are nuanced by the fact that the overall effects of price arbitrage on the price signal over time may result in intertemporal resource rents being competed away. When we compared our results to other areas of Eastern Canada, this raised new questions about long term profitability, especially in a fishery such as Quebec, where management is based largely on input controls. We estimated a price flexibility equation as a function of lagged landings, seasonal dummy variables, the exchange rate between the United Stated and Canada, using SIMETAR-2008. A comparison of the two models, one from Quebec and one from Nova Scotia, suggests that investing in lobster holding technologies causes a smoothing of price variability. The results suggest that fishermen would try to maximize their profits by adopting an inter-temporal arbitrage strategy, but that profits in the absence of output controls, according to fisheries economic theory, could provoke an upward pressure on effective effort which would then accelerate the open access solution. This could negate the price arbitrage effect.Keywords: Fish and Aquaculture Sectors Development, Bioeconomic Analysis of Fisheries, Fisheries Economic

Rights and representation support justice across aquatic food systems

Injustices are prevalent in food systems, where the accumulation of vast wealth is possible for a few, yet one in ten people remain hungry. Here, for 194 countries we combine aquatic food production, distribution and consumption data with corresponding national policy documents and, drawing on theories of social justice, explore whether barriers to participation explain unequal distributions of benefits. Using Bayesian models, we find economic and political barriers are associated with lower wealth-based benefits; countries produce and consume less when wealth, formal education and voice and accountability are lacking. In contrast, social barriers are associated with lower welfare-based benefits; aquatic foods are less affordable where gender inequality is greater. Our analyses of policy documents reveal a frequent failure to address political and gender-based barriers. However, policies linked to more just food system outcomes centre principles of human rights, specify inclusive decision-making processes and identify and challenge drivers of injustice

West African fisheries : past, present and 'futures?'

This thesis provides evidence for why more complete fisheries catch estimates should be included in fisheries assessments. West African fisheries suffer over-exploitation, illegal fishing and overcapacity. Certainly, overlooking small-scale sectors and attributing “zero” to existing gaps do not improve the situation. Under-reporting masks fisheries real trends and overcapacity, contributing to intensifying over-exploitation, whose impacts, along with the effects of climate change, could be disastrous. My research focuses on the fisheries of the Western part of the African continent. I begin by presenting methods to estimate the “invisible” catch through the case study of Senegal. I designed this “catch reconstruction” to illustrate the effects of illegal fishing on small-scale fisheries whose geographical range has increased significantly. I used reconstructed data for small-scale fisheries to quantify their contribution to employment and the economy, their profitability and the evolution of fisher’s income as compared to the national poverty line. I found that people increasingly rely on fisheries despite their low income, now dangerously close to the poverty line. Foreign fisheries also contribute to generating income, but also to income losses. I compare the performance of fisheries by China and Europe in West Africa in terms of reporting, illegal fishing and compensation. It appears that despite the inherent policy differences between China and Europe in terms of their Distant Water Fleet (DWF) operations, they both under-reported catches, fished illegally and undercompensated for fishing agreements. They also both contribute to reducing the biomass of fish available to local fishers, and hence to a reduction fishing opportunities and incomes. Fish stocks, and therefore, fisheries are also affected by climate change. I examine these effects and overlap them with some fisheries socio-economic indicators and found that artisanal fishers were more likely to “follow the fish” by expanding their fishing range, while industrial fishers seem to have more flexible as their range of adaptation strategies appears to be wider. In summary, the work on West African fisheries refutes the myth of “lack of data”, and I show that sufficient data exist to analyze the effects of current fisheries policy, and by implication, to formulate alternatives.Science, Faculty ofResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forGraduat

Assessing Guinea Bissau's Legal and Illegal Unreported and Unregulated Fisheries and the Surveillance Efforts to Tackle Them

Fisheries in Guinea Bissau contribute greatly to the economy and food security of its people. Yet, as the ability of the country to monitor its fisheries is at most weak, and confronted with a heavy foreign fleet presence, the impact of industrial foreign fleets on fisheries catches is unaccounted for in the region. However, their footprint in terms of catch and value on the small-scale sector is heavily felt, through declining availability of fish. Fisheries in Guinea Bissau are operated by both legal (small-scale and industrial), and illegal (foreign unauthorized) fleets, whose catches are barely recorded. In this paper, we assess catches by both the legal and illegal sector, and the economic loss generated by illegal fisheries in the country, then attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) of Guinea Bissau's fisheries. Two main sectors were identified through official reports and a literature review, the large-scale (industrial) sector, which between 2011 and 2017 included exclusively catches by foreign owned and flagged vessels, and catches by the small-scale sector, which remain largely unmonitored in official statistics. We use the available data on the number of legal and illegal vessels and/or fishers, and their respective catch per unit of effort to estimate catches, and we analyze monitoring outcomes against the registered industrial and artisanal fleets. We find that of the legal industrial vessels, 20% were linked to criminal activities in the past 7 years. These activities range widely from using an illegal mesh size, to fishing in a prohibited area, to labor abuse. Overall, total small-scale and industrial catches were estimated at 370,000 t/year in 2017, of which less than 2% is ever reported to the FAO. Small-scale catches represented 8% of the total catch, and this contribution was found to be declining. Industrial fisheries generate over $458 million US, or which$75 million US is taken illegally, falling under the category trans-national fisheries crimes. The slight negative relationship between the number of monitoring days at sea illegal catches suggests increasing MCS efforts may play an important role in reducing illegal fishing in the country

Fisheries Centre Research Reports, Vol. 23, No. 3

The development trajectory upon which these West African countries found themselves when they became independent was strongly shaped by this colonialism, which was harsh and difficult to get rid of - particularly for the ex-Portuguese colonies. Traces of colonialism are thus felt at all levels, notably where the struggle for political and economic ‘agency’ after formal independence plunged these countries into perennial political instability (e.g., Guinea Bissau), or long and murderous civil wars and/or wars over natural resources (e.g., Angola, Congo ex-Zaire). Some other countries transited smoothly into neo-colonies, where development and research institutions fail to play their nation-building role, as they serve mainly to maintain previous colonial ties. This has resulted, particularly in the former French colonies, in a general reluctance to transfer knowledge to local institutions. Neo-colonial ties are also illustrated through the profile of exploitation of natural resources, notably fish stocks, to which the former colonial powers often maintains a privileged access. As a result, West African countries did not develop truly national industrial fisheries, which would have formed an obstacle to the foreign industrial fleets that gradually invaded their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ). As a consequence, in most of their coastal areas, foreign vessels and the stock depletions they cause(d) hinder the development of the artisanal and local industrial fisheries. This has led to growing tensions, which are only partly alleviated by foreign fleets being reflagged to the countries in whose waters they operate, and landing the low-value part of their catch locally. The resolution of these tensions, increased by growing demands for fish by both consumers in Western Europe and East Asia, and the inhabitants of West African countries, will determine whether issues of food security will prevail over the power of international markets. This is the reason why we contrast, for each country, the catches of smallscale fisheries, which mostly enter the local economies, and those of industrial (mostly foreign) fisheries, which tend to hinder their development.Science, Faculty ofOceans and Fisheries, Institute for theResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forUnreviewedFacultyPostdoctora

Editorial: Illegal Fishing as a Transnational Crime

Discusses the environmental and socio-economic impacts of IUU fishing on a local, regional, and global level and the connection with various elements of transnational organized crime

The duplicity of the European Union Common Fisheries Policy in third countries : evidence from the Gulf of Guinea

Belhabib would like to thank I-Sea Fisheries Project at Ecotrust Canada, funded by the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation.The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) espouses the significance of fisheries and their contribution to food and economic security globally. It emphasises the need for the conservation of the ocean and the integrity of marine resources in the interest of future generations. Demonstrating an understanding of the need to implement the UNCLOS, the European Union (EU) introduced a Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in 1983, later revised in 2013 effective from 2014. This paper discusses how the implementation of the EU's CFP is undermining the long-term food and economic security of highly vulnerable regions such as West and Central Africa. Focusing on examples from Liberia and Guinea Bissau, the paper elaborates further on how the EU fisheries subsidies, which are central to its Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements (SFPA) with third countries, contradict the provisions of its CFP, as they continue to target fully exploited and overexploited species notwitstanding the declared commitment to sustainability. The current paper also provides evidence that uncovers the EU's selective application of its own regulations on preventing Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing thereby illuminating the extent of its duplicity.PostprintPeer reviewe