Options to reduce IUU fishing in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zanzibar
This Report is in support of the EU/COI SMARTFiSH Programme’s Result Area 2, which is to improve the Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS) of fisheries in the western Indian Ocean and the Great Lakes.
The overall objective of this report is to contribute to the reduction of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing in the target countries of Kenya, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania (URT), but with a particular emphasis on unreported and unregulated fishing. Four main fisheries are covered; the EEZ Tuna fisheries, the fisheries of Lake Victoria, the near-shore Industrial Prawn fishery and Coastal Artisanal fisheries.
There is a particular focus on the small-scale fisheries operating along the coast and on Lake Victoria. The Report describes the current scope of data provision, management and use in these fisheries, and the fisheries management challenges faced by the three target countries, and it concludes with a number of recommendations for SMARTFiSH programmes intervention The report was prepared largely on the basis of interviews conducted in-country with officers from the respective fisheries departments and on the contents of literature provided by them.
In addition, representatives of national research organisations, the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organisation and NGOs working on the coast were also able to communicate their perspective and current contributions to fisheries management and the reduction of IUU fishing.
The management of EEZ tuna fisheries is the responsibility of the Deep-sea Fishing Authority (DSFA) in the URT. Although fisheries are generally not a Union issue, the recently operational DSFA represents both mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar’s interests in EEZ fisheries management.
In Kenya responsibility lies with the Ministry of Fisheries Development (KMFD), which is headquartered in Nairobi but has an important office in Mombasa.At a regional level, stock assessment work is undertaken by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), of which both Kenya and URT are members. The provision of accurate and timely fisheries data to the IOTC is a sine qua non for the future sustainability of the tuna fisheries in the Indian Ocean and although data are also passed directly to the IOTC by fishing companies, it is important that member states have independent data sets to evaluate the performance of the fishery in their respective EEZs. This will become particularly relevant if national quotas become the favoured management approach in the region.