St Helena : Protection of St Helena’s Fishing Industry
Submitted by Saint Helena Herald (Juanita Brock) 04.02.2008 (Article Archived on 18.02.2008)
A letter by Mrs Julie Thomas to St Helena Herald published in the 11th January 2008 edition asks “What are we doing to assist our fishing industry?”
Protection of St Helena’s Fishing Industry
A letter by Mrs Julie Thomas to St Helena Herald published in the 11th January 2008 edition asks “What are we doing to assist our fishing industry?”
The letter highlights concerns about unauthorised fishing vessels fishing in our 200 Mile Exclusive Fishing Zone (EFZ).
It is known that pelagic stocks migrate to within our EFZ on an annual basis and once in our zone this resource is available to our fishermen. If foreign fishing vessels are allowed to harvest the fish stocks in our fishing waters there is less fish for the Island’s boats to catch. “What is St Helena doing to deter these vessels?” Mrs Thomas’ letter asks.
It has been suggested that a fishery patrol vessel of some kind is required for protecting our fishing interests. Whether St Helen Government has any plans for fisheries security it is not known. It would have been interesting to hear the Chief Secretary’s answer if a question on fisheries protection had been put to him in Legislative Council last week during the adjournment debate.
We do however know how questions are being answered elsewhere on fisheries protection in the British Overseas Territories, which would include St Helena.
It is recorded in the House of Lords Hansard dated 11th December 2007 that Lord Jones of Cheltenham asked Her Majesty’s Government, whether the Marine Bill will include provisions for the security of fisheries around the British Overseas Territories. The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker) said that the Marine Bill will not include provisions specifically for the security of fisheries around the British Overseas Territories.
However, the Bill will make certain enforcement powers exercisable in relation to English and Welsh registered fishing boats and to British nationals wherever they may be active, whether inside or outside of UK waters.
More recently in January 2008 Mr Richard Beales, Senior Natural Resources and Environment Advisor, Overseas Territories Department, Department for International Development (DFID) when asked about fisheries protection in our 200 Mile EFZ he commented that, unfortunately, there aren’t any easy answers to fisheries protection but it is an issue that DFID are trying to find its way around. Some people say all we need is a patrol boat, but that is oversimplifying the situation. Because just by having a boat, which is very expensive to operate and trying to stop and search vessels, or arrest vessels on the high seas is a very dangerous activity, so there is rather more to it.
Probably, Mr Beales said, with the airport coming along it does open up the possibility of surveillance flights taking place from St Helena on occasion and to gather evidence of illegal fishing against which appropriate sort of diplomatic protests can be made, vessel names and numbers can be put on regional black lists for example. There are other ways of tackling this other than by straight forward patrol boat type operation.
Fish is still St Helena’s biggest export market. A great deal of money has been spent over the years including from the Overseas Development Authority (now called DFID) on increasing the potential to catch fish, and upgrading processing facilities to the standard where fish caught in St Helena waters can be accepted and served up in restaurants in Europe and elsewhere in the world. The Argos Atlantic Cold Stores Ltd investment with greater cold store capacity than that of the St Helena Fisheries Corporation means that Argos can accept all of the fish that is caught provided that Argos has the capacity to process it.
As stated in paragraph 2 above pelagic stocks migrate to within our EFZ on an annual basis; once in our zone this resource is available to our fishermen. But if the fish are not there to be caught in our waters then it can’t be caught and as Mrs Thomas’ letter points out “fishermen cannot be expected to catch the same fish twice”.
In 2007 between January and December Argos Atlantic Cold Stores Ltd received 401.75 tones of fish. This was 100 tonnes less than in 2006 and 150 tonnes less than in 2005. Could the fact that less fish is being caught have anything to do with foreign fishing vessels illegally harvesting our fish?
Contributed by Cyril Gunnell
|
