PEDRO STEENKAMP, Walvis Bay | Friday
NOT even the veteran fishermen in Walvis Bay can say exactly what is wrong. They can only speculate why the shoals of nearly all the fish species along the Namibian coast have vanished. But it’s a fact, they said: for nearly the whole of the past two months, the catches of all species were very poor and a matter of great concern to them.
Except for the poor appearance of the very valuable demersal species, hake, monk, kingklip and sole, the vessels also experience a lot of trouble with the ever-growing number of seals in Namibian waters. “When we pull our lines in, the seals strip our hooks. It’s like people picking fruit from a tree and we can do nothing about it,” one said.
“What we don’t understand, is why the inspectors of Fisheries and Marine Resources that are stationed on our vessels, do not report this situation to their head office”, another said. The fishermen said the government does not believe them when they say that there are excessive numbers of seals along the Namibian coast. They also believe that the seal population is to a great extent responsible for the destruction of the fish stocks. Going by the pelagic catches until now, the industry faces one of the poorest seasons in the memory of the old hands.
Although the pilchard quota for this season is only 10_000 tons, the smallest in many years, the industry could not even succeed to catch 1_000 tons until the end of June from when the season opened just after the Easter Weekend.
If the scattered appearance of pilchard continues, there is no hope that the industry will catch its allocated quota of pilchard.
The owners and crewmen of the private vessels that normally catch pilchard for the factories are likely to suffer the most. Towards the end of June when there was a small improvement in pilchard stocks, some of the factories sent their own vessels out and stopped the private vessels from catching for them.
The result of this was that the private vessels have been at anchor for most of the year leaving the crewmen without an income. According to these crews, the owners only pay them for their catches and they do not receive monthly basic salaries. – Namibian Economist