New study names corruption to influence illegal fishing

Dar es Salaam. A new research which examined the issue of illegal fishing around the Lake Victoria has named corruption to be a factor undermining efforts to curb illegal fishing in the lake.

A team of researchers from the UK, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Croatia conducted 133 interviews from the three countries sharing the Lake Victoria of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda involving leaders from beach management units, boat owners, boat crew, fish processors and traders and fisheries officers.

Published this month in the International Journal of the Commons the research, titled ‘Compliance, corruption and co-management: how corruption fuels illegalities and undermines the legitimacy of fisheries co-management’ confirmed that corruption exists and perpetuates illegal activity in the one of Africa's Great Lakes.

The researchers found out that corruption is part of the system and involves all stakeholder groups from fishers and fisheries officers to police and the judiciary.

About half the boat owners and boat crew, fish processors and traders, referred to bribery and corruption when talking about their knowledge and experience of illegal fishing.

They told researchers how enforcement officers demand bribes, rather than take offenders to court, or may arrange for regular payments in exchange for allowing the continued use of illegal gear.

The researchers warned that corruption runs the risk of undermining co-management, an arrangement at the centre of combating illegal fishing which brings together local resource users, including fishers, traders and processors, work with government, and other actors, like NGOs, to manage fisheries collectively.

The arrangement is implemented in the hope that by involving the users of the resource, it will encourage more sustainable practices. But researchers said that due to corruption this arrangement is at the danger of being disrupted.

This is partly due to the fact that because of corruption members become discouraged from enforcing regulations when enforcement officers, such as government fisheries staff and police officers, actively seek bribes and return seized gear.

The researchers recommend several measures that can be taken to stop corruption within fisheries.

The measures range from ensuring that fisheries departments do their job in a timely way, for example by fast-tracking licensing of boats which normally take years whereas it should be done quickly and regularly to the monitoring and supervision of fisheries staff.

A 2012 study by SmartFish said that the decline of Nile perch stocks in the Lake Victoria suggest that fisheries departments in all the three countries sharing the lake were allowing illegal unreported and unregulated fishing to continue thriving.

The study found that the total biomass of Nile perch decreased from 1.4 million tonnes (92 per cent of total biomass in Lake Victoria) in 1999 to its lowest recorded estimate of 298,394 tonnes in 2008 (14.9 per cent of total biomass)

As of 2010, the Nile perch biomass was estimated at 18 percent of the total biomass in Lake Victoria. In addition, the study noted a marked increase in the number of illegal gear being deployed to target under-size fish.