A five-day Port State Measures Agreement Training Workshop, organised by FishFORCE and Stop Illegal Fishing (SIF), took place in Maputo, Mozambique from 25 – 29 April 2022.

Attended by 31 participants from 13 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 and decision making.

Noa Rafael Senete, SIF Expert, commented, “Illegal fishing puts the fishers and processors who are playing by the rules at an unfair disadvantage. Illegal fishing is conducted outside laws that protect our fisheries, and by dishonesty, they operate at a lower cost and undercut the prices of our legal fishing industry. By effectively implementing the PSMA in Mozambique we can better assess and control who we allow to access our ports.”

Per Erik Bergh, Stop Illegal Fishing, commented, “This workshop has provided a timely opportunity to build on recent interagency discussions on shared approaches and mechanisms for developing legal, safe and fair fisheries, held in Mozambique in February 2022. The meeting focused on coordinating the implementation of tools for port State measures, safety and labour. By looking at the three treaties[1] together we can better identify areas of common concern and shared operational and information processes.”

JD Kotze led an in-port inspection utilising body worn cameras (BWCs), demonstrating the benefits of this approach for widening participation in the inspection process, and providing support to frontline officials. BWCs were initially trialled in Mozambique under the Port State Measures to Stop Illegal Fishing (PSM-SIF) initiative. Following a successful pilot scheme in 2020, SIF continues to promote the use of body worn cameras as a means of improving inspection performance and providing remote assistance and mentoring to multi-agency inspection teams.

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.

[1] The three treaties – the PSMA, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Cape Town Agreement (CTA), and the International Labour Organization (ILO) Work in Fishing Convention No. 188 (C188) have been developed as international instruments to use ports to block illegally caught fish from being landed; to reduce the number of accidents and fatalities; and to improve safety, working and living conditions in the fisheries sector.