Determined to end illegal fishing, especially in the Gulf of Guinea, the Fisheries Committee for the West and Central Africa has established a Regional Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Centre to help counter the menace.
Headquartered in Tema, Ghana, the centre will help FCWC member countries like Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Togo manage their fishing sectors.
According to a statement by the Secretaty-General of FCWC, Seraphin Dedi, the new centre is integrated into the FCWC West Africa Task Force, which is financed by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, known as NORAD.
The centre, which was opened in May, is equipped with vessel-tracking systems and has the capacity to collect data on authorised fishing vessels across the region where Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing had been a scourge for decades.
He said, “The RMCSC’s establishment brings us a step closer to having coordinated approaches to joint action, including patrols for better security in the maritime domain of our region.
“Illegal marine trade costs West Africa almost $1.95bn across the fish value chain and $593m yearly in household income. IUU fishing also decimates rapidly diminishing fish populations, destroys ecosystems and has been linked to other crimes such as piracy, kidnapping and drug trafficking.”
China, he added, is the world’s worst IUU fishing offender, according to the IUU Fishing Index, and has targeted West Africa for years.
The centre, Financial Street gathered, is expected to help countries counter the methods fishing trawlers use to evade law enforcement in areas where maritime security is weak, such as falsifying vessel licence and registration information, under-reporting catch size, using illegal gear and incorrect vessel names, and turning off their transponders to avoid detection.
“We are providing training to both the regional centre staff and the national staff on the use of the systems the centre will be deploying and how to integrate them with other sources of intelligence,” he said.
