Liberia, in another move towards improving the governance of their fisheries has launched ‚the Bureau of National Fisheries website ‚designed to publish information on the country’s fisheries sector including information on regulations and licensed vessels and a range of downloadable resources. The website highlights the importance of the fisheries, and provides a key tool in supporting fisheries management and in particular monitoring, control and surveillance in the country and in the wider West African region.

The development of the website marks an important milestone on the road to rebuilding and developing the fisheries sector and it directly responds to recent illegal activity and the use of forged licences in the country.‚ One of the features of the website is information on industrial fishing licenses, as the Bureau of National Fisheries states, ‘any vessel that is not on this list is not legally licensed to fish in Liberian waters’.‚ The website provides detail on the requirements and guidelines for obtaining a legitimate license to fish.‚ ‚ 

The website is still in its early days, launched on Tuesday 17th of April 2012, it still has some teething problems.‚ The Bureau of National Fisheries with support from the West Africa Regional Fisheries Project (WARFP) is busy working on these and they hope to regularly update and improve the site.‚ Overall, the site is attractive, useful and a highly commendable step in providing information and thus greater transparency in the fishery governance processes in Liberia.

Stop Illegal Fishing is pleased to cooperate with Liberia in the fight against illegal fishing in West Africa and encourages more countries to make their fishery information, and in particular fishing vessel licence lists public.

The website can be accessed here: www.liberiafisheries.net.‚ The use of forged licenses in the Liberian‚ EEZ‚ is described in an earlier SIF article that can be read here.‚