Lake Victoria illegal fishing: The fight should target organised criminals

By Lake Zone Watch Analyst

For many decades, fishing has been a lucrative industry in Tanzania as it is the source of livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people and a dependable basis of government revenue accrued from fish-processing factories that export the products to foreign markets to earn the country the much-needed foreign currency.

However, in recent years this money-spinning sector has seen a dramatic decline because of illegal fishing in the country’s major lakes — Victoria, Tanganyika and Nyasa – just to cite an example.

Overfishing by organised crime syndicates in Lake Victoria could drive 76 percent of fish species to extinction if deliberate measures are not taken to fight the crime.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is bitterly concerned that illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing is posing a severe threat to the survival of fish species in the world’s second-largest freshwater body 94 percent shared between Tanzania and Uganda, and the remaining 6 percent by Kenya.

A 2018 IUCN report says that fish species threatened with extinction in the lake include crustaceans like shrimps and crabs, which are important to local livelihoods.

Apart from over-fishing, other drivers of fish disappearance in the lake are pollution, agriculture and invasive species, illegal fishing gear (including trawl nets), and unorthodox fishing methods, such as poisoning, which contribute to the depletion of species.

Such methods, according to experts in the fishing industry, also fuel hostility among local fishermen, as fish become scarce.

They say the rapid decline of fish stocks and species is largely fuelled by undeclared and illegal operations. For example, the volume of undeclared and illegally caught fish is almost double the declared tonnage as fish is shipped out of the region by large organised crime syndicates.

Illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing thrives in Lake Victoria because of the scourge of corruption as Customs officials are bribed to allow consignments to pass without being inspected.

Researchers who have thrown their weight behind studies on Lake Victoria fishing activities say illicit consignments are transported along legal channels, and it becomes near impossible to identify what had been caught illegally.

Studies show that in 2018 the International Journal of the Commons published a research paper that also found that corruption fuels illegalities and undermines the legitimacy of fisheries co-management in Lake Victoria. It points out that corruption in managing the lake is systemic, involving stakeholders such as the police and judiciary in all of the three countries — Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

In principle, the laws of these three oldest members of the current East African Community ban overfishing and unconventional practices such as the use of firearms, explosives, electrical shock devices or poison substances for the purpose of fishing. These methods are frequently used by organised criminal groups. The impact on the environment is severe, as are associated revenue losses.

Consequences of Lake Victoria fishing decline:

The decline of the fishing industry in Lake Victoria can generally be described as a “national tragedy”, as it has greatly hurt the once prosperous fish-processing factories in such towns as Mwanza and Musoma, which used to employ more than 800,000 people.

“The industry used to provide direct employment to many people whose livelihoods are now at risk. They’re currently wallowing in poverty without any dependable source of income. It’s indeed a catastrophe to say the least,” says an artisanal fisherman in Musoma town in a highly strain of melancholy.

The ball is now on the government’s court to institute a strong, functional and uncorrupted response in fighting large-scale illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing around Lake Victoria.

It isn’t enough for the law enforcers to focus on the “small fish” (artisanal fishermen) leaving behind the gangs of organized criminals to reap huge profits from Lake Victoria riches.