Reuters: “The Ship from Hell” Threatens African Fishermenff

According to a report by the global news agency Reuters the EU fleet is threatening the livelihood of the people in Mauritania.  Here below the full article by Reuters:

Harouna Diop remembers the days when there were only six small wooden fishing boats working the waters off Nouakchott’s barren coastline.

Just hours at sea in one of the richest fishing grounds in the world were enough to fill the long, brightly-colored vessels with sardinella, horse mackerel, snapper and tuna.

Nowadays his son can spend a week on the water and still struggle to catch enough fish to earn a living. He and his fellow fishermen blame industrial trawlers from Europe, which they say are sucking up Mauritania's once abundant stocks.

”There were a lot of fish before. Now there are hardly any. The big nets, the big boats have taken them all. They work night and day,” said Diop, 64, who has worked in Mauritania’s small-scale fishing industry for more than four decades.

”We have to go further to get fish and we can't afford the fuel,” he said, loading a crate of glistening fish on to a cart.

Mauritania’s shores, where the Sahara meets the Atlantic, are home to one of the world's largest concentrations of fish, crustaceans and molluscs, as well as hammerhead and tiger sharks, dolphins, turtles and rays.

Despite its natural wealth and population of just three million, the Islamic republic - which straddles Arab and black West Africa - is one of the world’s poorest nations. Almost two thirds of its people live on less than $2 a day.

Mauritania awards fisheries agreements every five years to the European Union. The latest deal, which runs out in July, allows more than 240 foreign vessels into Mauritanian waters.

But the new government -a group of technocrats installed after a bloodless coup last August- says the deal struck by the former administration sells the country’s resources off too cheaply and threatens the livelihoods of 30,000 people.

”We estimate under the terms of this agreement, European fishermen catch as much as 600 million euros ($720 million) worth of fish each year and we receive 96-100 million euros,” Fisheries Minister Sidi Mohamed Ould Sidina told Reuters.

”All of our deep-water potential is fished by the European Union. We just catch the dregs because our boats are very outdated and not very effective,” he said.

”THE SHIP FROM HELL”

Nouakchott’s fishermen say they sell each catch -roughly enough fish to fill one of the battered old Peugeot 504s which ply the route from the beach to the market in the center of town- for about 100,000 ouguiya ($370).

Half of that goes on outboard fuel, a bit more on the transport into town and on food, and the rest is split between up to 25 crew members in each pirogue -traditional long, thin wooden boats painted in bright reds, yellow and greens.

The fishermen’s canoe-like boats and simple nets are a stark contrast to the European vessels working further offshore.

Until recently, one of the world’s largest fishing vessels plied the waters off Mauritania, the Irish-owned Atlantic Dawn, a 64-million-euro trawler-cum-fish-processing-plant that can store 7,000 tons of fish, or enough for 18 million meals. With 60 crew members on board at any one time, the 144-meter ship has fished off Mauritania for six years, catching sardines and sardinella. It is known locally as “the ship from hell.”

”We feel we’re an easy target - the big ship looks like the baddie,” said Niall O'Gorman, finance director of Atlantic Dawn, the holding company that owns the vessel.

”The big ships are just an attempt to be more efficient by processing at sea and storing the fish in cold storage,” he told Reuters, adding that the vessel was able to process about 300 tons of fish per day.

BETTER DEAL?

The Atlantic Dawn used to operate under a private agreement with Mauritania, but since August’s coup it had been repeatedly boarded by the authorities and was now waiting to return under the protection of the next EU agreement, O'Gorman said.

”We were boarded for the fifth time at the end of one trip and (accused) of fishing inside an area that wasn’t permitted…There was no appeals procedure so we just paid the fine and took the vessel away,” he said.

The fisherman on Nouakchott's beach are hoping the country's military junta -which ended two decades of authoritarian rule by former President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya and installed a civilian government- will do more to win them a better deal.

”The big boats do not respect the zones they should be in. There are accidents where the big boats crash into the pirogues. People have drowned,” said Talibouya Tew, 30, as he helped his colleagues drag their catch-laden vessel on to the sand. ”Now with the changes after the coup, we are hoping things will improve,” he said.

Fisheries Minister Ould Sidina said efforts were being made with European countries to better regulate vessels operating in Mauritanian waters, confirming there had been deaths, but added that there were violations of the zones from both sides.

He sympathized with calls from Nouakchott’s fishermen for European countries to invest in a fishing industry in Mauritania rather than simply plucking fish from under their noses, but said the country was some way off being an economic power.

”We are a people who are very close to nature. We are not a consumer society,” Sidina said, sipping tea in his modestly-furnished office.

Source: Reuters News Agency