A five-day Port State Measures Agreement Training Workshop, organised by FishFORCE in collaboration with the University of Nairobi Maritime Centre FishFORCE Academy East Africa (UoN-Maritime Centre) and Stop Illegal Fishing (SIF), took place in Mombasa, Kenya from 9 – 13 May 2022.

Professor Winifred Kamau, Dean of the UoN-Maritime Centre, officially opened the workshop on ‘Enhancing National Interagency Capacity and Collaboration for Combating Maritime Security Offences: National Interagency Workshop on Implementation of the FAO PSMA’. She stated, “The development of the blue economy in Kenya has led to a growing awareness of the requirement for all relevant agencies to take responsibility and work together to combat IUU fishing and associated crime.s”

Attended by 25 participants from nine different organisation or agencies, the workshop provided practical and classroom training on the implementation of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA). As the first international agreement to tackle illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, the PSMA requires cooperation and information exchange between national agencies. Detecting IUU fishing at sea is difficult and expensive, but all fish caught at sea must ultimately come to port somewhere. The PSMA establishes standards for countries to ensure that illegally caught fish will not be landed, transhipped, packaged, or processed in their ports.

The week-long training covered legal and operational procedures and challenges and provided practical exercises to develop skills for risk assessment, inspection, evidence collection and decision making. A practical in-port fishing vessel inspection was used to highlight areas for interagency cooperation to better identify and act against illegal fishing and maritime crimes.

Body worn cameras, piloted through the Port State Measures to Stop Illegal Fishing (PSM-SIF) initiative, were deployed to demonstrate the benefits of their use in widening participation and support for the inspection process and as a counter corruption tool.

Per Erik Bergh, Stop Illegal Fishing, commented, “Kenya has been a regional pioneer in blue growth. Implementing rigorous and well-coordinated risk assessments on fishing vessels as they seek permission to fish or access to port are crucial.  This workshop has provided an excellent forum for interagency discussion on shared approaches and mechanisms for developing legal, safe and fair fisheries.”

This training forms part of a series of workshops and trainings on PSMA implementation organised by Nelson Mandela University’s FishFORCE Academy, technically supported by Stop Illegal Fishing and with funding support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.