EU er ansvarlig for de kæmpe fisketrawlere, der i øjeblikket totalødelægger det lokale fiskeri ud for den vestafrikanske kyst.
Det skriver Greenpeace i et indlæg på deres hjemmeside 27. februar.
The Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise is currently in Mauritanian waters to highlight the problems of overfishing emptying African seas. Vast factory-style fishing boats are trawling out fish at an alarming rate and decimating local ecosystems and livelihoods in the process.
The campaign team at sea have already encountered a number of these super trawlers in the seas off Senegal last week. Boats from as far away as Russia and China fish these waters, but the EU is also exporting its own overfishing to West Africa, according to Greenpeace.
The NGO has made a new report on what is happening in the waters off West Africa, and why reform of Europe’s fishing laws has to tackle this element of Europe’s fishing footprint too.
Some of the biggest, most ominous (ildevarslende) offenders are the mega trawlers of the Pelagic Freezer Association (PFA), which include the largest trawler ever built. This is overcapacity on an obscene scale, Greenpeace writes in the blogpost.
The European fleet is unfairly competing with local fishermen. It would take 56 traditional fishing pirogues one year to catch as much fish as one super-trawler can capture and process in a single day. But it gets worse. We subsidise these massive vessels to fish away Africa’s future, Greenpeace writes.
As the report reveals, an estimated 142,7 million euros of European taxpayers’ money was paid to enable these vessels to fish Mauritanian and Moroccan waters between 2006 and 2012. The PFA had previously received a further whack of EU subsidy, a meagre 21 million euros to modernise their fleet.
The impact on local communities is huge. With less and less fish local fishermen are forced to make dangerous journeys further away, some simply give up and move away. Trawlers trash traditional fishing gears, which the locals can’t afford to replace. Whilst nominal deals may have been done with governments, it is local communities and Africa’s seas that pay the price.
When fishing represents the main source of protein, and a major source of livelihoods, it really matters how much we are stealing from Africa’s waters. And with increased danger from collisions with trawlers, some West African fishermen end up paying with their lives, Greenpeace warns and the post continues:
We have to stop the subsidised plunder of Africa by European fishing boats. Europe’s fishing fleet is simply too big. We cannot continue to export our overfishing addiction. We have to make fair deals on fisheries and make sure that we are not stealing from the people of West Africa, the Pacific, or anywhere else for that matter. This is just the start of our ship tour in West Africa, look out for more updates from us, and directly from the team onboard soon.
Kilde: greenpeace.org
