Posted by modiggitty on 04/04/2006 11:46 am

Well a lot has happened since I last wrote... As you all know we have been working with the Guinean authorities to find and arrest illegal or pirate fishing boats. During the night of the 27th we found a group of boats, and at first light sent up the helicopter to identify the ships.  Lian Run No. 14 - one of a family of Chinese vessels we have documented - was not on the list of ships authorized to fish. We then launched the inflatables and after confirming the ship had no license it was arrested.
 
The captain claimed that the documentation was lodged in Las Palmas...it wasn't of course. Also all the boxes on board for packing fish bore the names of other vessels.
 
The ship was a piece of junk and had next to no steering mechanism. We had crew that stayed on board with the Guinean authorities and the Esperanza escorted the vessel into port. It took us well over 24 hours to travel the 60 miles into Conakry (in Guinea).
 
It was a really weird situation and made a lot of us question what we feel we should be doing. Knowing that the crew, probably quite unaware of the licensing or lack thereof, from poor countries, and probably with families to feed, are now imprisoned on their ship in Guinea - for who knows how long is just really sad.

I thought about it long and hard and it now sits okay with me even if it is not a situation that I like.
 
Greenpeace's role is to take action to stop environmental crime - and what is going on here is both environmentally wrong as well as having huge human rights issues entangled with it. In this region the only effective way to halt the practice is to work with the authorities to make arrests... and to get EU to live up to it's promise to help with this problem here.
 
I guess I am babbling now.
 
We have since been all over the place - and are now hunting down illegal reefers (boats that pick up the fish from the ships at sea) - more on this in the next few days.
 
Celeste

Posted by modiggitty on 04/03/2006 1:32 pm

March 27, 2006 

We have been off the Guinean coast for the last ten days. We have tried to remain relatively undercover - documenting illegal fishing in the waters of some of the poorest countries in the world. For the last few days we have also had authorities from Guinea on board. They are from the Fishing Authority and the Navy. We are working with them to board and arrest these pirate vessels before they can launder any more of their illegal cargo through Europe's ports.

So far, we've recorded 67 foreign-flagged vessels within Guinea Conakry's 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Of these, 19 are not authorized to fish at all. Another 22 have known to have been involved in illegal fishing at some point in the past. We couldn't identify nine of them - their names were hidden, or they covered them as we approached. Eight vessels, also unidentified, were spotted inside the Guinean 12-mile zone - waters reserved for local "artisanal" fishermen, most of whom still use small canoes called pirogues.

In the shadowy world of pirate fishing, illegal catches are transferred to "reefers" (refrigerated ships), which then deliver the fish onto the dinner plates of Europe, via the port of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

Fish consumption has been rising in Europe and elsewhere, but there's actually been a decline in West Africa - the only region in the world where this is happening. In the struggle to compete with illegal industrial trawlers, local fishermen are losing their livelihoods - and in some cases, their lives. Others are forced farther out to sea - we've seen them working more than 100km from the coast, bobbing around in small boats, at the mercy of the elements. The Guinean authorities have virtually no capacity to combat fish pirates, even when they come within a couple of miles of the shore.

Up to now, there's been lots of talk from governments - including and especially the EU - about tackling the problem. If they were actually bothered about stopping pirate fishing, we wouldn't need to be here, helping out the Guinean authorities. With all their talk about encouraging aid to Africa, it's ironic, hypocritical and downright ridiculous that local sources of food and income are being pillaged for European fish markets.

Amazingly it is estimated that fish stolen from sub-Saharan Africa totals 1 billion US dollars each year! Potentially this income could pass up from local fisherman all the way to federal governments if were not for these pirates - can you imagine the impact that could have for this region?

Celeste