Fish woes

ANGLER WRITES:

The situation at Swakoppoort Dam where multiple tons of fish are continuously being stolen and reportedly transported with government vehicles is not unique, since similar situations must exist at many other dams, not to mention the perennial rivers of Namibia, where illegal fishing and other crimes are the general order of the day.

The unprofitability of fishing enterprises, labour problems associated with this, as well as sky high prices of fish, (putting it beyond the financial ability of locals), requests to be allowed to fish within fish breeding areas, etc. are all blamed on high fuel prices and other very convenient excuses.

The truth of the matter is however that, despite scientific surveys and methods to determine marine fish stocks in Namibian waters, and assuming that fishing companies are properly monitored and not exceeding allocated quotas and types of fish they catch, stock levels simply continue to drop and it is becoming increasingly more difficult to fill quotas economically and ultimately profitably.

There can only be one reason for this situation, and that is that the fish are being stolen by fishing vessels illegally operating in Namibian waters. This is a worldwide occurrence where some countries cannot monitor their waters effectively. A South American country has recently even obtained the assistance of the USA Air Force to patrol their waters with large bombers, costing millions of USD and demonstrating just how dire the situation is, how helpless and desperate these governments are and how big the scale of such illegal operations is.

It is clear that Namibia cannot even prevent the killing of rhinos (and many other game), nor effectively control livestock rustling, which happen on land where it is much easier to actually protect them, so it can only be imagined what must be going on at sea.

Factory ships just outside Namibian territorial waters must be working overtime to process the catch brought to them by their flotillas of smaller trawlers entering and leaving Namibian waters at will.

Maybe it is time to pay less attention to the harassment of the few licensed shore anglers, while at the same time ignoring the so-called "bicycle fishermen" who are often not licensed, routinely exceed daily quotas, (including bags full of undersize fish) and who do so almost exclusively by using illegal bloodworms as bait, and rather concentrate on the big problems.

This modern day industrialized large scale poachers need to be stopped.