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Major crackdown announced to ensure fishing boats licensed
– only 450 of 1,500 artisanal vessels registered
Authorities have announced a crackdown on fishing vessels to ensure that they are
Authorities have announced a major crackdown to regularize the operations of fishing boats.
licensed to operate.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, yesterday, it had requested and received assistance for support to conduct monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) activities, within Guyana’s marine fisheries sector to ensure that operators of all categories of fishing vessels are in compliance with the laws and regulations governing the sector.
The activities will be supported by the Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard and the Guyana Police Force Marine Branch.
According to the ministry, the idea is to reduce illegal, un-reported and un-regulated (IUU) fishing activities; to increase the number of vessels licenced on an annual basis; to ensure that the industrial fleet is in compliance with the necessary regulations and to gather the information that would be useful in the fight against piracy.
Currently, Guyana’s marine fisheries sector fleet is divided into three main sub-categories- industrial, semi-industrial and the artisanal fishing fleets.
The industrial fishing vessels are trawler-type vessels that target prawns and seabob shrimps as the main species with finfish as by-catch.
The ministry explained that all trawler type vessels are required by regulations to have their vessels fitted with Turtle Excluder Devices and By-catch Reduction Devices.
The seabob vessels operations are limited to fishing grounds between the seven and 18-fathom depth contours, while the prawns vessels are permitted to operate above the 18-fathom depth contour.
Currently, to ensure there is no overfishing, the seabob fleet is engaged in its annual closed season and only vessels engaged in research are permitted to be in the fishing zone. The closed season commenced on August 31 and will reopen on October 20, 2016.
The semi-industrial fleet target mainly the pelagic species such as red snapper and grouper and comprise a local fleet of 58 registered vessels that utilize traps to capture the species and 20 Venezuelan vessels that are licensed to a local company. The Venezuelan vessels utilise hook and line to capture their species.
The artisanal fleet comprises locally constructed wooden vessels. An artisanal frame (boat count) survey conducted in 2011 estimated that approximately 1,234 vessels were in operation. A perusal of the Fisheries Department records have, however, indicated that these numbers have since increased and it is estimated that in excess of 1,500 of these types of vessels are in operation.
While the 100 percent of the industrial fleet is licenced on an annual basis, only 35 or 60 per cent of the 58 semi-industrial vessels on the register are licenced annually.
The operations will seek to verify these figures and remove non-operational vessels from the register, the ministry explained yesterday.
“Of the estimated 1,500 artisanal vessels in operation, approximately 450 or 30% of these vessels are licenced annually,” it was disclosed.
During the upcoming operations, personnel from the Fisheries Department, the army Coast Guard and the police will be visiting landing sites throughout the coast as well as conducting at sea stops and inspections to ensure that all operators of fishing vessels within the marine fisheries sector are in compliance with the laws of Guyana.
According to the ministry, the Fisheries Act makes it clear that every owner of a local fishing vessel which is operational, have to be the holder of a valid certificate of registration.
“It is hoped that defaulters will make every effort to ensure that they are in compliance with the laws governing their fishing operations failing which, they will be prosecuted for non-compliance.”
The fishing industry recorded a negative growth of 7.2 percent last year.
In recent years, piracy and overfishing have affected performance with Government announcement of a number of steps to bring the situation under control.
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