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Local fisheries thrive due to Somali piracy
The Somalian piracy problem has garnered some very negative headlines during the past couple of years. In essence, what the media highlights is the economic damage these pirates cause and how they have emerged as powerful mobsters, that lead lavish lifestyles. Yet these aspects only provide a narrow perspective on this quite complex problem. For example, one question that is seldom asked is the origins of these pirates. Leading experts in global terrorism believe the original motives of the pirates were tightly linked to protect local fishing grounds from foreign fishing fleets. This excerpt is from a story run by Times magazine
Ever since a civil war brought down Somalia’s last functional government in 1991, the country’s 3,330 km (2,000 miles) of coastline — the longest in continental Africa — has been pillaged by foreign vessels. A United Nations report in 2006 said that, in the absence of the country’s at one time serviceable coastguard, Somali waters have become the site of an international “free for all,” with fishing fleets from around the world illegally plundering Somali stocks and freezing out the country’s own rudimentarily-equipped fishermen. According to another U.N. report, an estimated $300 million worth of seafood is stolen from the country’s coastline each year. “In any context,” says Gustavo Carvalho, a London-based researcher with Global Witness, an environmental NGO, “that is a staggering sum.”
In the face of this, impoverished Somalis living by the sea have been forced over the years to defend their own fishing expeditions out of ports such as Eyl, Kismayo and Harardhere — all now considered to be pirate dens. Somali fishermen, whose industry was always small-scale, lacked the advanced boats and technologies of their interloping competitors, and also complained of being shot at by foreign fishermen with water cannons and firearms. “The first pirate gangs emerged in the ’90s to protect against foreign trawlers,” says Peter Lehr, lecturer in terrorism studies at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews and editor of Violence at Sea: Piracy in the Age of Global Terrorism. The names of existing pirate fleets, such as the National Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia or Somali Marines, are testament to the pirates’ initial motivations.
Earlier this year several media outlets ran an AP story highlighting the link between Somali pirates and recovering fish stocks in the region. Basically, increases in pirate activity has scared off the roving bandits – fishing fleets from mainly from South Korea, Japan and EU - that have previously been exploiting the rich fishing grounds in the region.
In past years, illegal commercial trawlers parked off Somalia's coast and scooped up the ocean's contents. Now, fishermen on the northern coast of neighboring Kenya say, the trawlers are not coming because of pirates.
"There is a lot of fish now, there is plenty of fish. There is more fish than people can actually use because the international fishermen have been scared away by the pirates," said Athman Seif, the director of the Malindi Marine Association.
This interesting video repeats this point, and shows that the activities of Somali pirates have hugely varying consequences to different groups of people.
The fishermen of Malindi are celebrating and it’s all thanks to the pirates. Since piracy has scared away the international trawlers who were ravaging Kenya’s fish stocks, local fishing is thriving again. These fishermen are used to earning less than £5 a day but over the last few months they’ve been netting huge catches, increasing their wages by over 50 times. ‘Yesterday I made 20,000, I got a big shark’ boasts one fisherman. With only one patrol boat and thousands of miles of ocean, preventing illegal fisheries has been an impossible task for the Kenyan fishery department. Something, ironically, the pirates are taking care of. But it’s not only the fisherman who are benefiting from revived fish stocks, sports fishermen are having their best season in 40 years. ‘I have never seen a season like it’ beams Captain Massood, who takes tourists on deep-sea fishing trips. Marine biologist Steve Trott believes this ‘is the strongest indicator yet that these commercial scale fleets have had a destructive impact on Kenyan fisheries.’
I’m personally not convinced that overexploited fish stocks can recover on such short time-scales, but this is an interesting hypothesis. It could be a consequence of fish migrating to these regions from other areas that continue to be heavily exploited by foreign fleets. However, the positive effects on local East African livelihoods remain, despite the ecological mechanisms behind the fishing boom
The Somalian piracy problem has garnered some very negative headlines during the past couple of years. In essence, what the media highlights is the economic damage these pirates cause and how they have emerged as powerful mobsters, that lead lavish lifestyles. Yet these aspects only provide a narrow perspective on this quite complex problem. For example, one question that is seldom asked is the origins of these pirates. Leading experts in global terrorism believe the original motives of the pirates were tightly linked to protect local fishing grounds from foreign fishing fleets. This excerpt is from a story run by Times magazine
Ever since a civil war brought down Somalia’s last functional government in 1991, the country’s 3,330 km (2,000 miles) of coastline — the longest in continental Africa — has been pillaged by foreign vessels. A United Nations report in 2006 said that, in the absence of the country’s at one time serviceable coastguard, Somali waters have become the site of an international “free for all,” with fishing fleets from around the world illegally plundering Somali stocks and freezing out the country’s own rudimentarily-equipped fishermen. According to another U.N. report, an estimated $300 million worth of seafood is stolen from the country’s coastline each year. “In any context,” says Gustavo Carvalho, a London-based researcher with Global Witness, an environmental NGO, “that is a staggering sum.”
In the face of this, impoverished Somalis living by the sea have been forced over the years to defend their own fishing expeditions out of ports such as Eyl, Kismayo and Harardhere — all now considered to be pirate dens. Somali fishermen, whose industry was always small-scale, lacked the advanced boats and technologies of their interloping competitors, and also complained of being shot at by foreign fishermen with water cannons and firearms. “The first pirate gangs emerged in the ’90s to protect against foreign trawlers,” says Peter Lehr, lecturer in terrorism studies at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews and editor of Violence at Sea: Piracy in the Age of Global Terrorism. The names of existing pirate fleets, such as the National Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia or Somali Marines, are testament to the pirates’ initial motivations.
Earlier this year several media outlets ran an AP story highlighting the link between Somali pirates and recovering fish stocks in the region. Basically, increases in pirate activity has scared off the roving bandits – fishing fleets from mainly from South Korea, Japan and EU - that have previously been exploiting the rich fishing grounds in the region.
In past years, illegal commercial trawlers parked off Somalia's coast and scooped up the ocean's contents. Now, fishermen on the northern coast of neighboring Kenya say, the trawlers are not coming because of pirates.
"There is a lot of fish now, there is plenty of fish. There is more fish than people can actually use because the international fishermen have been scared away by the pirates," said Athman Seif, the director of the Malindi Marine Association.
This interesting video repeats this point, and shows that the activities of Somali pirates have hugely varying consequences to different groups of people.
The fishermen of Malindi are celebrating and it’s all thanks to the pirates. Since piracy has scared away the international trawlers who were ravaging Kenya’s fish stocks, local fishing is thriving again. These fishermen are used to earning less than £5 a day but over the last few months they’ve been netting huge catches, increasing their wages by over 50 times. ‘Yesterday I made 20,000, I got a big shark’ boasts one fisherman. With only one patrol boat and thousands of miles of ocean, preventing illegal fisheries has been an impossible task for the Kenyan fishery department. Something, ironically, the pirates are taking care of. But it’s not only the fisherman who are benefiting from revived fish stocks, sports fishermen are having their best season in 40 years. ‘I have never seen a season like it’ beams Captain Massood, who takes tourists on deep-sea fishing trips. Marine biologist Steve Trott believes this ‘is the strongest indicator yet that these commercial scale fleets have had a destructive impact on Kenyan fisheries.’
I’m personally not convinced that overexploited fish stocks can recover on such short time-scales, but this is an interesting hypothesis. It could be a consequence of fish migrating to these regions from other areas that continue to be heavily exploited by foreign fleets. However, the positive effects on local East African livelihoods remain, despite the ecological mechanisms behind the fishing boom
