News
The Impact of Illegal Fishing: Sierra Leone
Amadu Seaport Kamara, Master Fisherman, Tombo
Text and photos by Susan Schulman
Five years after the official end of Sierra Leone’s long and brutal war, the country continues to struggle. The wealth of its legendary resources continues to elude its impoverished and largely unemployed population. And now, while illegal fishing increasingly undermines the lives and livelihoods of the many wholly dependent on artisanal fishing, its impact on the environment threatens more permanent devastation.
"I have always been a fisherman. My father was a fisherman too, he was taught by his father, just as my father taught me and I have taught my children. When I was a small boy, and when my children were small it was always the same, then, like now, the wives would trade the fish that we would bring in every day. Big fish they were. Bigger than today. We even used bigger nets. The fish were that much bigger.
But now things have changed. Then, we made a good living from fishing. We had a good standard of living: we had a plentiful variety of food, including vegetables and fruit we could easily afford to buy for our families.
"Now, it is a different story. The catch is greatly reduced. We are no longer able to effectively fish, no longer able to fish as we used to. For example, we have just used about 25 gallons of petrol and we have caught only about 6 dozens of fish, 6 dozens of fish cannot even buy one gallon of petrol. This implies that it is better to sit home and not fish than to go fishing and waste so much fuel without it bringing any positive benefit on livelihoods.
"The trawlers are a huge problem. They come right into our fishing areas, they over fish, they net huge quantities of fish and then throw away the fish they don’t want. We see dead fish all the time floating in the water. And when the trawlers come in, they sometimes run over our fishing nets, cut them, take them and there are even some accidents where trawlers have wounded boats and fishermen. This is rampant not just around Tombo but also around the other fishing villages in Bonthe and Conakreedy and the other fishing villages.
"There have been many reports and the fishermen file complaints with marine resources to try and get compensation. There was actually an incident here where the trawler rolled over the boat and the fishermen were thrown off the boat into the sea and were forced to swim to save their lives. Luckily they managed to survive without any serious injuries but this is not an isolated incident. And because the fish being caught has been depleted, people are using smaller and smaller nets and this is having the effect of diminishing the supply of fish even further as the smaller nets catch the juvenile fish so the stocks end up not growing, as they should be. It is a very bad situation.
"You can see for yourself if you stand and look at the wharf. Before these problems with the illegal fishing, this would have been a very active spot where you would have seen a lot of fish landings, with people removing catch from their nets, people selling fish to the fishwomen, fishmongers and so on, but as you can see, there is not much activity. As you can see, it is quiet on the wharf.
This lack of activity is an indicator of the impact of illegal fishing. There are about 15 000 inhabitants of this village, the minimal number of people at the wharf because people come to the wharf to actually come and buy fish, some rely on buying and selling everyday to earn a living, but as you can see at the water, there are few people relative to the number of inhabitants.
"This is a fishing village, it always has been. Fishing is our lives. The lack of activity shows the very serious effects.
"And the consequences are felt here. One of the big problems is that people are no longer able to pay the school fees. Their entire income was dependent on the fishing and now they can no longer catch fish, they are no longer able to pay the school fees and are having to take their children out of school. Same with medical bills. Now that people cannot afford to pay the doctor, a lot more people, children too are dying as they can’t afford to take them to the doctor. A lot more too, especially children are getting ill more frequently as compared to before when they were able to feed their children more balanced diets. So this is the problem. It is very serious."