West Africa’s seas are under threat: illegal fishing is destroying marine life and crushing people’s livelihoods.
Local fishermen point their fingers at foreign vessels – mainly Chinese, but also European.
“I am from a fishing community, but you hardly see any people fishing now,” says Mustapha Manneh, an environmental journalist in The Gambia.
“Most of these Gambians are now not into fishing because there is nothing [to fish].”
By some estimates, illegal fishing is costing the region at least $2bn (£1.4bn) a year – and many thousands of jobs along the way.
But a new surveillance centre
in the Gulf of Guinea is trying to stop this from happening.
“We will be able to monitor all the vessels operating in this region,” says Seraphin Dedi Nadje of the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea
, which is behind the project.
“It [will] provide information to member countries and support them to take action.”
Will it make a difference? Find out in Wednesday’s edition of Africa Daily.
Source:Fiilafmonline/BBC
