Dr. Nicholas Watts, told in a press meet that both industrial fisher folk and artisanal fishers are carrying out illegal fishing in the waters of African countries. He urged the African nations to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in their territories jointly.
Dr Watts is a Fisheries Project Coordinator of the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council. He was speaking at the fisheries meeting of African ministers of fisheries and aquaculture in Banjul. At the press meet Dr Watts said if industrial fishers were fishing illegally, the fisher folk in coastal communities in the African region would lose because their trawlers would destroy part of the ecosystem on which the artisanal fishers depended for their livelihood.
He also noted that the fisher folk communities in the coastal zones get the best value out of all sorts of fish they catch. According to him, industrial fishermen look for particular types of species, and sometimes about 30 to 70 per cent of their catches are discarded, whereas the artisanal fishers make sure that everything from the catch is used.
Dr Watts also informed that irresponsible fishing could lead to the extinction of certain species of fish, adding, ‘some people argue that by 2050, many species of fish will be extinct and we will only have jelly fish and slime on the face of the earth’.
