Paul Fauvet
31 May 2008
Maputo — The Mozambican Fisheries Ministry has just one modern patrol boat to police the entire 2,500 kilometres of coastline, between the Rovuma river and Ponta de Ouro, on the borders with Tanzania and South Africa.
Interviewed by AIM, Fisheries Minister Cadmiel Muthemba said that the most serious problem facing his ministry is the lack of resources to deal with illegal fishing. He could not even hazard a guess as to how much Mozambique loses every year through the looting of its marine resources, since there is no way of knowing how many foreign vessels are plundering the country's territorial waters.
"We don't have any data that allows us to say how many boats are involved and how much of our resources they take", he admitted.
The one boat the ministry does have, operated jointly with the Mozambican navy, came into service this year, and is rented at a cost of two million US dollars a year. Endowed with radars and other communication and visualization systems, this vessel is supported by two speedboats which can, in theory, intercept any boats found fishing illegally in Mozambican waters.
Ideally, said Muthemba, the country should have three such patrol boats, covering the southern, central and northern regions from the ports of Maputo, Beira and Nacala, and a fourth, larger vessel that could patrol the country's 200 mile exclusive economic zone.
But the costs are prohibitive. Muthemba said acquiring these vessels would mean an investment of around 100 million dollars. So the government's immediate strategy centres on the more modest goal of acquiring one patrol boat, with the support of cooperation partners such as Norway, which would replace the rented vessel.
Even one fully equipped boat could cost 18 million dollars. To make the most of this investment, it would be used both as a patrol boat and as a survey vessel, researching the country's fishery stocks.
Muthemba said the country does have a measure of control over the licensed vessels. There are 36 companies operating with 98 licensed industrial fishing vessels (that is, ships with on-board freezing facilities), mostly fishing for prawns in the Sofala Bank off the central Mozambican coast.
The signals issued by these ships can be tracked by satellite, thus making it possible to know whether they are staying within the areas covered by their licences. Muthemba regarded inspections of the licensed vessels by ministry officials as satisfactory. In cases of infractions, the companies concerned are fined or, in extreme cases, their licenses can be cancelled.
Fishing contributes about three percent, or 150 million dollars a year, to the Mozambican Gross Domestic Product. This figure is difficult to calculate since much of the fisheries production comes from 140,000 artisanal fishermen. Sampling systems are used to estimate the size of their catches, but there is still room for a considerable margin of error.
Exports of fisheries produce earns the country about 90 million dollars a year. By far the most important of these exports are the prawns from the Sofala Bank, which are mainly imported by members of the European Union. Mozambique has therefore ensured that the quality of these exports meets the rigorous standards demanded by the European Union.
"The European inspectors visited us last year, and our standards were accepted", said Muthemba. "We operate to international standards and have three quality control laboratories, in Maputo, Beira and Quelimane".
The Ministry has been taking measures to protect stocks of prawns ever since an assessment of stocks in 1998/99 sounded the alarm about overfishing in the Sofala Bank. Falling yields were a clear sign that something was wrong, and so the government decreed that only larger mesh nets could be used (to avoid catching immature prawns), and since 2000 has refused to issue any new licences for the Sofala Bank.
To reduce the pressure on stocks, some vessels were withdrawn. Nonetheless Muthemba admitted that the fishing effort on the Sofala Bank is greater than it should be. The government's Fisheries Research Institute has recommended a fishing effort of 180,000 hours per year - but Muthemba put the current effort at 250,000 hours a year.
There are two possible solutions - reduce the number of vessels operating on the Sofala Bank, or reduce the number of days they are at sea. The first option is unattractive on financial grounds. "If we cancelled fishing rights, we would have to pay the companies compensation", said Muthemba. "We don't have the money for this".
The alternative is to expand the closed season. At the moment fishing in the Sofala Bank is prohibited for four months in the year. The proposal before the government is to extend the closed season to six months - which would mean no prawn fishing between September and February.
Muthemba said the fishing companies agree in principle. "Their interests are also damaged by overfishing", he said. "They don't want to put out to sea for long periods and return with small catches. That entails huge fuel costs for the companies".
The Ministry also suspects that the decline in the prawn catch may be linked to illegal fishing practices by artisanal fishermen near the shore in the areas where prawns breed. The use of nets with an extremely fine mesh mean that these fishermen catch everything that is in the water - including prawn larvae.
Repeatedly poor fishermen have been found using mosquito nets. "The Health Ministry distributes the nets to protect people against malaria, and instead they use them to go fishing!", exclaimed Muthemba.
He did not believe that repressive measures would be much use in stamping out such practices. It was more effective to organise the fishermen into associations and Community Fishing Councils, and make appropriate fishing gear available to them.
Muthemba noted that in some areas where the Community Fishing Councils are active they have succeeded in eliminating the use of mosquito nets for fishing.
Associations of artisanal fishermen had also proved able to use microfinance efficiently. "These producers have learnt that money is not free, and they must repay the loans", said the Minister.
He claimed that in these micro-credit schemes repayment rates approach 100 per cent, allowing the micro-finance groups to establish rotating funds which contain two to three million meticais (up to 124,000 dollars), a large sum for a poor fishing community.
Pf/ (1024)
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