Anacef urges to control the fishing surpluses that Senegal and Mauritania sell to China, Turkey or Korea

Director Martín warns that the EU has already given Senegal a yellow card for these practices, with which it makes "really unfair competition"

EFE

December 11 2024 (15:08 WET)
Updated in December 11 2024 (15:08 WET)
The managing director of Anacef, Juan Carlos Martín. Photo: Anacef.
The managing director of Anacef, Juan Carlos Martín. Photo: Anacef.

The Anacef fishing producers' organization, whose fleet fishes in West African fishing grounds based on EU agreements with third countries, has urged the competent administrations this Wednesday to control the surpluses that they suspect are sold to China, Turkey or Korea.

This was requested by the managing director of Anacef, Juan Carlos Martín, before participating in a meeting with representatives of the EU and the ministries of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of Spain, Morocco, Senegal, Guinea Bissau and Mauritania to evaluate the current fishing collaboration agreements and the most appropriate strategies to combat illegal fishing. 

Martín has warned that the EU has already given Senegal a yellow card for these practices, with which it makes "a really unfair competition" with respect to "the activities that comply with all the sustainability requirements, not only in the biological field, but also in the social one", as the European fleet does.

The control policy was addressed at this Wednesday's meeting because "it is useless to adopt management measures to recover resources if there is no effective control", the managing director of Anacef, an organization based in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, told reporters.

Martín stressed that "the European fleet is not suspicious" because "it works with all the sustainability indices and is monitored every day of the year with a specific control system installed in each vessel by the Spanish administration", in the case of the fifteen Anacef vessels, which also fish in Angola under a private agreement. 

"In addition, so that the position of our vessels is at all times controlled by third countries, we installed a box compatible with the system they use", he stressed, while regretting that "despite all these efforts" Anacef "has the feeling that these coastal countries also sell to China, Turkey or Korea that surplus of fish that" they commercialize in the EU.

The representative of this organization of fishing producers stressed that last February Spain joined the work agreement in fishing, which establishes that the working conditions on board the vessels must be the same for both national and third-country crew members, which, "obviously" "has higher costs than those that other fisheries that are roaming freely may have". 

"The EU takes these things seriously, it has already imposed the yellow card on Senegal for illegal fishing and that already has an immediate consequence, since the fishing agreement it had with that country could not be extended" due to that sanction, he said. 

The Anacef representative hopes that Senegal "will do its homework, adapt, and make an effective control of illegal fishing so that the agreement can be resumed because the next phase is the red card and that would have an indirect consequence for the European fleet, such as the impossibility of unloading in" Senegalese ports, he added.

Martín stressed that the sector "feels affected, since this is detrimental to the sustainability of resources" and warned that if these practices are not controlled, the Anacef fleet "will have to go somewhere else".

"China is colonizing all of Africa, last week we were able to verify in Nouadhibou (Mauritania) the number of Chinese ships that are there, they are new fleets, also Turkish, and if there is no control over them the situation will turn against us", he said.

Martín stressed that Europe "pays a lot of money for fishing agreements and in the end does not obtain the adequate return for that type of compensation: 60 million annually to Mauritania and 18 million to Guinea Bissau, to which is added what the shipowners have to contribute as license fees". 

Most read