Lobbies threaten fish stocks in Morocco and weak monitoring mechanisms
A. Latif Baraka: Heba Press
A question that the Moroccan consumer repeats every time he enters the market: “Whales are expensive and cheap”, without knowing that this simple question hides dozens of answers that are known only to those who daily deplete the fishery resources in the seas of Morocco. United Kingdom, and are sometimes hidden by those who monitor the fishing sector. Some aspects of this depletion of Moroccan fish stocks will be revealed.
– Reports of theft of fish stocks
No one disputes that the topic of “the depletion of fisheries resources” has been taken up in the independent media and has reached the top of Parliament or in political salons. On the contrary, most parties include it in every electoral right of their reform programs, and it has done so. It has reached the point where politicians threaten to denounce the lobbies of the sea, and there are those who have called for regulation for the beneficiaries of this sector, which many still considered today as characterized by a “rent of rent”.
These reports indicate that the monitoring and counting of boats authorized to fish, especially in the central and southern regions of the Kingdom, has revealed the widespread use of “blind fishing” and that there is a real threat to fish wealth, and that coastal fishing of all kinds or on the high seas does not professionally comply with the laws regulating maritime fishing. Some reports reveal that about a thousand boats in four fishing villages in the Dakhla-Oued Eddahab region do not comply with the law regulating maritime fishing, and this number of course applies to other areas of the region. the center and the north, some of which have double numbering, and boats of unknown owner.
– Environmental organizations calling for protection of marine resources
The Coalition for the Protection of Living Marine Resources had previously warned of the risks threatening fish stocks, calling for an intensification of monitoring, auditing and counting of fishing boats in different ports in order to activate Morocco’s obligations in terms of preserving living resources.
A coalition source reported that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Rural Development, Water and Forests stopped octopus fishing on the coast of the Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab region a month and a half ago. However, professional fishermen’s associations believe that biological rest “is not a solution, after the National Institute for Marine Fisheries Research confirmed that fish stocks in the region are close to exhaustion.”
The same source adds that the limited effectiveness of biological rest in preserving fishery wealth is due to the continuous operation of fishing boats at random during the aforementioned period without control, indicating that these boats use methods that even exhaust fish eggs. Which prevents its reproduction.
According to the same data, it is not the sailors who created the problem of blind fishing, but rather the large lobbies operating in this area, some investors owning a hundred boats. Only a few of them are licensed, the rest operate illegally.
The Coalition for the Protection of Living Marine Resources considered that the approach adopted by the Department of Marine Fisheries to address the phenomenon of indiscriminate and widespread fishing “strengthens the Aleutis Plan, which is based on the regulation of fishing effort through specialized scientific monitoring and legal mechanisms that clarify the rules that must be respected by everyone.
Illegal fishing poses the greatest threat to the renewal of fish stocks
All stakeholders in the maritime fishing sector agree that overfishing has become the greatest threat to the fishery wealth of the Moroccan coast, and that the process of counting unlicensed boats or those that misled regulatory agencies by double-numbering boats, the figures exceed what is available in the maritime fishing delegations in the various ports.
Sources say that these “unidentified” boats not only threaten the fishery wealth, but are also exploited for drug trafficking and illegal immigration to Europe, and that the lobbies that profit from the situation resort to hiding the boats until the end of the surveillance campaign, in order to be able to resume their activities. activities.
Deep sea fishing at the quay
Those interested in the maritime fishing sector in Morocco believe that there is a large fleet operating on the high seas, or what they call “intruder fleets” in the sector, and this is mainly linked to fishing with vessels that deplete marine resources because they sweep away fish and the marine life that feed on them.
In addition to these huge fleets, RSW vessels have recently appeared and have contributed to the extinction of fishery resources, as we have never experienced a decline in sardine stocks. About 200 years ago, pelagic fish were abundant in the sea, but. after the entry of this type into the offshore fleets, the situation has become catastrophic and the Ministry of Fisheries bears responsibility for this because it made a serious mistake by authorizing these vehicles to fish in Moroccan waters.
Professionals in the sector have previously alerted the Ministry of Fisheries through meetings
It is held by the Ministry of Fisheries to allow the use of vessels of this type that do not employ a large workforce, unlike traditional fishing boats that employ 4 families on board and 4 other people in the marina, in addition to other personnel who work with the boat almost directly, which means that the traditional boat is much better than these huge vessels that are considered a privilege for the benefit of people who make huge sums of money from them, and it is certain that this license had a severe impact on fish stocks in Morocco, whether in the Atlantic Ocean or in the Mediterranean Sea.
In addition to these fleets, the structure has evolved
The structural and technical structure of boats and ships in Morocco, at the traditional and coastal levels, and these advances have allowed us to be among the top five countries in the world in this field, due to the increase in the stock landed in the ports.
What is saddening is the lack of jealousy towards the national fish stock, and this is reflected in the fishing behavior of deep-sea vessels of the “Air Sao” type, which are supposed to catch pelagic fish, but unfortunately they drag the green and the dry, due to the lack of dissuasive measures to prevent them. This would have been effective in preserving Morocco’s marine wealth.
Among the fish that these ships catch by mistake because they are forbidden to catch them, there are tons of crustaceans such as the “dorad” and the “corbin” in Dakhla, which they sometimes get rid of by throwing them into the sea, and professionals find them dead above sea level. water in a disastrous manner, which means that the Al-Said ministry made a serious mistake in allowing ships fishing on the high seas to enter Moroccan waters.
Professional data confirm that 100,000 small traditional fishing boats are not equivalent to a single deep-sea fishing boat. It is not reasonable to compare a boat that catches 1,500 tonnes at a time and a traditional fishing boat whose unloaded quantities vary between 20 kg and a maximum of 200 kg.
Growth of sardine meal factories threatens stocks
The newspaper “Heba Press” has received dangerous data that reveals the satanic methods used by the fishmeal industry mafia in the desert, in order to accelerate the transfer of huge quantities of pelagic fish to fishmeal and fish oil factories, and explains how this growing lobby has managed to turn the Blue Plan into a zone of depletion of fish resources and convert them into fuel for fishmeal factories.
It is these factories, according to several sources, that have raised the price of sardines on Moroccan markets, because the Moroccan consumer could no longer obtain the same quantity that he consumed years ago, so that the increase in the price of sardines “Fish for the poor” was driven by the lobby of fishmeal factories, which transfer large quantities of fish caught on the coast and transported to their factories rather than into the stomachs of the Moroccan consumer.
