Appropriating illegal fishing nets from shops could, for sure, save fish species

Abdallah Ulega, Livestock and Fisheries minister

Abdallah Ulega, Livestock and Fisheries minister

The Guardian

IT is anyone’s guess how far the relevant authorities in Mwanza Region can adequately or visibly respond to appeals to intensify patrols to control the sale and use of unauthorised fishing nets.

The pleas are with a view to protecting certain fish species in Lake Victoria from extinction.

The individuals directly concerned here, among them members of the fishing community, made the calls recently in a media survey on the issue at some fishing spots in Mwanza city.

The study showed that some fishermen use nets barred from catching immature fish species especially the Nile perch as it has a high commercial value.

Clearly, the happiness when the fish is sold in the local market and supplied to processing industries to obtain fillet for export is bound to have some negative results not in the far future, and indeed other measures have been suggested.

One is the three-month fishing moratorium along the other major lake to the west, Tanganyika, where the riparian states sharing the border have agreed on the temporary stoppage of fishing activities.

We do not hear much about such an initiative with regard to Lake Victoria management, though there is a more active administrative layout there compared to the other.

Those who conducted the survey as well as the respondents were in no doubt that immature Nile perch are being fished in significant quantities as the loads are sold in different local markets.

Unauthorised fishing nets are meanwhile openly sold in different streets in the lakeside city. In addition, there are rather isolated islands where illegal fishing can be done more conveniently, which some stakeholders fear may lead to depletion of fish stocks in the expansive lake.

One might say that it doesn’t require a master’s degree to visualise as much, but some of those charged with the responsibility of monitoring the situation have been bending their fingers, sort of.

One limitation is that there doesn’t appear to be much of a thrust in putting up a fishing moratorium each year, whether the fishing gear remains the same or it can also be altered.

The gear has from time to time disturbed the authorities, and the ministry then overseeing the sector once supervised an energetic campaign against catching premature fish.

For one reason or another, this campaign was not being repeated from one year to another, which points at two related possible reasons – reciprocity and unpopularity.

For a lake whose waters are ‘shared’ by three countries, all the countries concerned need to agree on any move to standardise fishing nets, whereas at that time Tanzania had apparently stood alone.

For one thing, Kenya has a relatively small share of the lake and its fishermen have been pushing into islands in the lake, at one time causing violent disputes among island inhabitants as to which country that island belonged.

The two countries have recently been working hard to eliminate a whole series of trade barriers, which means that they weren’t exactly on the same wavelength on the fishing nets issue.

One country was likely to be somewhat opportunistic, remaining relaxed about fishing nets even if the fish stocks dried up. But with a clearer intent to eliminate trade barriers, they could finally come on board with compromise on the fishnet standardisation issue.