During early 1987, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) agreed that the two organizations should co-operate through the Bay of Bengal Programme (BOBP) to address marine pollution in the Bay of Bengal region. The BOBP would implement IMO-supported pilot projects to reduce pollution in fishery harbours and thereby improve the fishery harbour environment. Even a decade ago, it was realized that fishery harbours constitute a significant social capital and that there was a serious need to improve management of fishery harbours with particular reference to harbour pollution.
After an IMO appraisal mission in 1989, a pilot project to upgrade the reception facilities for garbage and oily wastes in Visakhapatnam Fishery Harbour, India, was formulated by IMO and later implemented by BOBP with the assistance of the Visakhapatnam Port Trust. This was followed by a BOBP-IMO initiative to assess the status of important fishery harbours in the region. A Regional Workshop on Cleaner Fishery Harbours was held in Penang in 1991. The general consensus was that pollution abatement in fishery harbours is essential if member countries wish to ensure quality products and maximise export potential.
What followed was a series of pilot projects - Phuket in Thailand; Negombo in Sri Lanka and Male in the Maldives. These projects were by no means elaborate; remedial action was not intended as part of project outputs. Again in keeping with the theme of the BOBP's second and third phases, the focus of the IMO-supported project was on working with stakeholders, on creating awareness about harbour pollution and its potential impact and the need to mitigate it. Awareness campaign materials - including a rudimentary booklet on Guidelines for Cleaner Fishery Harbours - were produced.
These pilot projects generated a wealth of experience about different types of harbours and stakeholder perception of the harbours, as well as about the limited options that harbour managers have because they lack information on pollutants, their impacts and their abatement.
We believe that a handbook on Fishery Harbour Management with particular reference to managing harbour pollution, containing information gained not only by BOBP's pilot projects but also from already published material, will give the harbour manager a better insight to the problem of insanitary fishery harbours and help him to initiate appropriate remedial measures.
"Fishery harbour manual on the prevention of pollution" is a step in this direction.
