Pirate fishing in Sierra Leone: A multi-million dollar business
Event
- Title:
- Pirate fishing in Sierra Leone: A multi-million dollar business
- When:
- 13 February, 2012
- Where:
- SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square - London,WC1H 0XG
- Category:
- Events/Meetings
Description
Pirate fishing in Sierra Leone: A multi-million dollar business
Date: Monday 13th February 2012, 6:30 - 9PM
Venue: Lecture Theatre G2, SOAS
Screening followed by panel discussion with Al Jazeera reporter Juliana Ruhfus; a representative from Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF); and a representative from the Sierra Leone High Commission.
The world's precious marine resources are being depleted by industrial-scale illegal fishing operations to feed the growing sea-food hungry markets of Europe and Asia.
This problem is particularly acute in West African waters where fish is a vital protein source for millions of people.
In Pirate Fishing, reporter Juliana Ruhfus and producer Orlando von Einsiedel take to the seas off Sierra Leone with an NGO, the Environmental Justice Foundation, to investigate the area’s illegal fishing trade.
After coming out of a brutal civil war that lasted 11 years, Sierra Leone has struggled to rebuild its devastated infrastructure. Its waters contain some of the richest fish stocks in the world and could, if sustainably developed and managed, one day provide the country with much-needed income.
Fishing currently represents 10 per cent of Sierra Leone’s GDP and is a crucial component in its food security, contributing 64 per cent of the total animal protein eaten in the country. But the pirate fishing activities of foreign trawlers are stripping these fishing grounds so quickly that unless the practice is stopped there will soon be nothing left to develop. Most important of all, local people will be deprived of a crucial source of food and protein.
Following the end of the filming for this documentary, several of the vessels that were identified as engaging in illegal fishing were fined and charged for infringing Sierra Leone’s fishing laws. The alleged complicity of the Sierra Fishing Company with some of these vessels has also come under scrutiny.
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