On 21-24 January 2025, MCS agents from the Seychelles Fisheries Authority (SFA) benefited from a national capacity building workshop on risk assessment and inspections, organised through the SADC Monitoring Control and Surveillance Coordinating Centre (MCSCC) as part of the project Oceans Vigilance. The objective for SIF and partner TMT: providing MCS agents with practical tools to anticipate risks of IUU fishing and take actions to address them, supporting existing efforts of the Seychelles to build up MCS capacity nationally, and to play a stronger role in strengthening regional MCS capacity. For this initial workshop, SFA also invited officers from national agencies with a role to play in combatting all dimensions of IUU fishing; a way to ensure that the complex issues linked to IUU fishing and their consequences are understood by all, fostering further interagency cooperation on addressing those challenges in a holistic way.

In 2017, SADC Member States approved the Charter for establishment of the Fisheries Monitoring Control and Surveillance Coordination Centre (MCSCC), with the aim to strengthen cooperation and capacity of SADC Member States to stop IUU fishing. The Charter came into force in 2023, the same year when Seychelles became its 12th signatory. For the Seychelles, a strong advocate of a sustainable blue economy, joining forces with other SADC Member States to protect the region’s fisheries is highly important.

The country has already experienced how effective such cooperation can be to combat IUU fishing. Before the MCSCC Charter came into force, the Seychelles was already an active member of a regional network in the West Indian Ocean (WIO): the FISH-i Africa Taskforce. Its main feature: sharing information about fishing activities considered to be at risk of IUU fishing in the region, this cost-effective model was a strong help for the Seychelles to identify and take measures against vessels suspected of IUU fishing activities. It is this successful model that inspired the functioning model of the MCSCC.

Today, assuming the role of Chair of the Regional Technical Team of the MCSCC, the Seychelles continues to be in the driving seat to take the MCSCC further and operationalise its functions. One of those priority functions: setting-up a SADC Regional Register of Fishing Vessels, to know who is allowed to operate in SADC waters and ensure they are playing by the rules. Seychelles is already making this information available to all MCSCC Members, sharing updated lists of registered and licensed vessels on a weekly basis. A good practice, which is in line with the country’s commitment to transparency on fisheries activities. The Seychelles has been amongst the first Candidate Countries to the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) and is hosting the FiTI Secretariat in Victoria. A strong engagement, for which Honourable Jean-Francois Ferrari, Minister for Fisheries and the Blue Economy is ready to advocate in the region: “Transparency is very important for us, to show to the public our actions to ensure the sustainability of our fisheries sector. Everyone benefits from transparency, even the industry that is permanently under scrutiny. We need this transparency regionally”.

The transparency achieved through the Regional Register will be a strong help for countries in the region to identify risks of IUU fishing. However, to fully realise the potential of the MCSCC, it is also crucial that MCSCC member States have adequate MCS capacity at national level to take actions when such risks are identified. It is to build and level that capacity regionally that the MCSCC has been organising risk assessment trainings in countries in the region. Before Seychelles, similar trainings were also organised in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania. An opportunity to introduce harmonised tools throughout the region, towards a harmonisation of MCS processes, another key objective of the MCSCC.