Pirate fleets 'stealing Africa's fish'

[T_i_B]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/16/wfish16.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/06/16/ixportal.html

Pirate fishing fleets from richer nations are stealing £500 million worth of fish a year from the waters of the poorest countries in Africa, a Government report says today.

The fleets, from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Europe, catch fish which are sold in Japan, the United States, Europe and south-east Asia, including some of the G8, which will be discussing aid for Africa at Gleneagles next month.

The report, prepared for a Government event on illegal fishing in London tonight, suggests that money spent on debt relief or aid, which G8 protesters are calling for, may be best used helping African countries enforce international law. It was prepared for the Department for International Development by Imperial College, London, and says that half of the fish caught off some of the poorest African countries are caught illegally.

Such fishing is removing stock worth at least £500 million a year from off sub-Saharan Africa alone, says the report. Guinea, the worst case, loses £55 million a year, chiefly in prawns, to foreign fleets.

[necso]

1. Africa is just another

opportunity for looting (in this case, "mining" fish) to the greedy and unscrupulous.

And let me use this excuse to plug a book: "Squandering Eden: Africa at the Edge", by Mort Rosenblum and Doug Williamson.

"...This is a hard look at a depressing future. Highly recommended.", from a review credited to Library Journal.

Worth a read, or a reread. Also has a useful index.

[Kagemusha]

2. So what would we prefer, a navy blowing these ships up?

Right.. sure.

[Redstone]

5. I'd actually vote for that.

The Japanese did the same thing in the waters of the Seychelles, where my wife is from.

The Seychelles government finally had to get itself a "navy" (one frigate) to chase the rapacious bastards off.

Not only do the Japanese and Russians and Chinese catch all the fish, their bottom-dragging trawlers strip the ocean floor of EVERYTHING, causing damage that can take decades to recover, if ever.

I think the countries involved have every right to chase them out of their territorial waters at gunpoint if necessary.

Redstone

[barb162]

6. ditto

[hatrack]

3. It's worth noting that in 1992, as the world rushed aid to Somalia . . .

And as the US sent in troops, and as aid organizations rushed to aid that nation's suffering people . . .

At the very same time, hundreds of ships from fishing fleets around the planet congregated off its shores, vacuuming up fish that the Somalis, who were just a bit "distracted" by all the famine and civil war and whatnot, were no longer able to take.

And they probably weren't too worried about silly concepts like "territorial waters" and so forth, either.

[jwcomer]

4. Somalis don't eat fish.

Believe it or not fishing has always been a very minor economic activity for the Somalis. Their society is pretty bigoted against eating anything other than red meat. I don't speak the language, but I've been told that their word for food is also their word for meat. South of Mogadishu, where you have a more agrarian culture, it's possible they eat fish. But that represents a very small potion of the coast line. Fishing as a state sponsored industry was tried under their former dictatorship but the entire fishing fleet was a few dozen boats.