Tackling illegal fishing in western Africa could create 300,000 jobs

A fisherman with a catch of angelfish, near Serrekunda in the Gambia.

The report says if regional governments build up fish processing industries and indigenous fishing fleets, they could generate $3.3bn.

Photograph: Alamy

From The Guardian by Jo Griffin

Overseas Development Institute report says crackdown on illegal fishing, and building up national fleets, could generate billions of dollars for the region

If governments in western Africa could end illegal fishing by foreign commercial vessels and build up national fleets and processing industries, they could generate billions of dollars in extra wealth and create around 300,000 jobs, according to a new report (pdf).
The devastating, social, economic and human consequences of overfishing in western Africa’s coastal waters have been well documented but the report, Western Africa’s Missing Fish, by the Overseas Development Institute and Spanish investigative journalists porCausa, lays bare the extent of lost opportunities across countries including Senegal, Mauritania, Liberia, Ghana and Sierra Leone.

“The scale of the losses is enormous. Instead of jobs and development, the livelihoods of artisanal fishers are being decimated by foreign fishing fleets, which operate virtually unchecked,” says Alfonso Daniels, lead author of the report, which presents new evidence of the extent and pattern of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) in the region – a global “epicentre” of overfishing.

For the first time, researchers used detailed satellite and tracking data to analyse the two main practices of IUU fishing: the activities of reefers – large-scale commercial vessels that receive and freeze fish at sea – and the transportation of fish in large refrigerated containers that are subject to less strict reporting requirements.
In 2013, they followed reefers off the coast of western Africa and found vessels from China, Holland and South Korea operating there, with fish exported globally.
Among the 35 reefers operating in the region that year, routes were consistent with the transfer of catches from fishing vessels to reefers, including inside the exclusive fishing waters of Senegal and Ivory Coast, countries that have banned ship-to-ship transfers of catches.

 The 120 m long Russian super trawler trawler Mikhail Verbitsky ishing in West Africa waters. Foreign fleets are plundering the West African waters while fish stocks are diminishing

Bycatch like dolphins end up dead or dying in the giant nets of the super trawler

The tracking data also revealed the extent of IUU fishing via transfers on to container ships.
Daniels says that 84% of illegal fish is taken out of the region in this way, making it hard to stop illegally caught fish entering the global supply chain.
“Container ships are ignored,” he says.
“Whether willingly or not, the industry has found a way to take out fish under the radar.”
The report says that a “crisis of global governance on the world’s oceans” has meant that international efforts to prevent the plunder of marine resources are likely to fail.
Daniels says it is essential to address all parts of the chain, highlighting three measures to combat IUU fishing: a ban on transferring fish at sea, strengthening regulations, and investment in patrols in “hot spots” of IUU fishing.

Artisanal fishers are at the frontline of the crisis.
Usmane Kpanabum, a fisherman on the island of Sherbro off Sierra Leone, says his nets were slashed by South Korean trawlers that fish inside the five-mile coastal zone reserved for artisanal fishers.
Sierra Leone had just two coastguard boats to patrol its entire coastline in 2013.
If regional governments end illegal fishing and build up fish processing industries and indigenous fishing fleets, they could generate $3.3bn (£2.5bn), eight times the $400m they currently raise by selling foreign rights, says the report.

By developing their fishing sectors, western African governments could create up to 300,000 new jobs, with artisanal fishers connected to consumers.

Using data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the report says this would lead to an almost 10% increase in the total workforce in the fisheries sectors, and would also create jobs for 90,000 women and reduce youth unemployment. 

 

Fishing harbor, Mauritania

 

It could also have a significant impact on food security, improving the diet and nutrition of people in the region as more households would consume fish protein normally exported by foreign vessels.
Daniels says: “We have a situation not only of missed opportunity but where resources are being exhausted very quickly – Nigeria and Senegal have very little left at all.”
According to one previous estimate, more than half of the stocks in the stretch of coast from Senegal to Nigeria alone have been overfished, with IUU fishing believed to account for between one third and half of the total catch. In 2012, according to data from USAid, Senegal was losing around $300m due to IUU fishing – equivalent to 2% of GDP.
“There are several global epicentres of overfishing – including the Pacific and South America – but western Africa is one of the worst because of the impact of overfishing on problems such as the drugs trade, organised crime and illegal migration,” Daniels says.

Links :

• BBC : How China's trawlers are emptying Guinea's oceans
• CNN : The great fish robbery that costs Africa billions 
• The Economist : Net positive, How to stop overfishing on the high seas 

Navy ships in the storm

D-646 Latouche-Treville, French fregate for anti-submarine warfare,

 class F-70 Georges Leygues, 139 m length, 4910 tons vessel,  with 240 crew members.
A part of this movie is visible in the movie "Oceans" of Jacques Perrin & Jacques Cluzaud.

The RNZN vessel HMNZS Otago sailing through a storm in the Southern Ocean.

20m swells with 80KMph winds.

Water by Nolan Omura

Underwater microscope provides new views of ocean-floor sea creatures in their natural setting

A new microscopic imaging system is revealing a never-before-seen view of the underwater world. Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have designed and built a diver-operated underwater microscope to study millimeter-scale processes as they occur naturally on the seafloor.

From The Conversation by Jules Jaffe, Andrew Mullen, Tali Treibitz

The Homo sapiens view of our world is all a matter of perspective, and we need to remember that we’re among the larger creatures on Earth.
At around 1.7 meters in length, we’re much closer in size to the biggest animals that have ever lived – 30-meter-long blue whales – than the viruses and bacteria that are less than one-millionth our size.
Our relative size and their invisibility to our naked eye makes it easy to forget that there are vastly more of those little guys than us – not just in number, but also in mass and volume.
And they’re vital to the health of our planet.
For example, every other breath of oxygen you take is courtesy of the photosynthetic bacteria that live in the ocean.

As early microscope pioneer Antony Van Lewenhook discovered approximately 350 years ago, these little “animalcules” are in almost every nook and cranny you can think of on Earth.
But until now, we haven’t been able to study most microscopic forms of ocean life in their native marine habitats at sufficient resolution to discern many of their miniature features.
This is important, as there are thousands of different millimeter-sized underwater creatures we previously couldn’t study unless they were removed and brought to the lab.

 BUM has a high magnification lens surrounded by focused LED lights and a companion computer with ceramic buttons. Andrew D. Mullen/UCSD

Our new Benthic Underwater Microscope (BUM) changes that.
In building our underwater microscopes, we are inspired by oceanographer Victor Smetacek’s question of whether an in situ computerized telemicroscope could “do for microbial ecology what Galileo’s telescope did for astronomy.”
Simply put, we hope so. Underwater microscopy can help scientists tackle research questions in new ways.
Using the BUM, we’ve already seen some amazing new coral behaviors.

 A glimpse of what we’ve been missing: Pocillopora polyps: a 2.8 x 2.4 mm field of view. 

Andrew D. Mullen/UCSD

Underwater optics

When researchers bring marine samples back to the lab, it’s impossible to exactly mimic the environment they came from – what we observe might not perfectly reflect creatures' real lives. Better, then, to bring the lab to the ocean.

For nearly five years now, our group has been tackling the technical challenges of underwater microscopy with the goal of recording images of marine life at these miniature scales.
We aim to explore microscopic life in a variety of natural settings via underwater imaging and video systems.
Previously, there was no technology available to see these tiny things from several centimeters away. The distance is important because we needed to put our components in a waterproof bottle and look out through an underwater port – placing us a bit away from our subjects.
Fortunately, with the commercial appearance of our hoped-for “long working distance” lenses, miniature cameras and efficient LED lights, we were able to assemble several underwater microscopes.

There were some technical challenges to overcome.
We had to figure out how to illuminate a very tiny area while simultaneously focusing a lens on precisely the same spot.
We also weren’t sure we could achieve the mechanical stability necessary to keep our system still enough to get great images.
And it was also paramount for a diver to be able to control the system via a computer interface.

 Have BUM, will travel.  

Emily L. A. Kelly/UCSD

After 18 months of work, we’d invented the first underwater microscope that a diver could carry into the field and use to take pictures of seafloor inhabitants at nearly micrometer resolution.
Our instrument allows us to clearly see features as small as one-hundredth of a millimeter underwater. An additional feature, a squishy electrically tunable lens, gives us the ability to rapidly focus on the objects that we are imaging.
This allows us to capture all parts of an object with substantial three-dimensional relief in focus.
The final system consists of two housings: one for the camera, lights and the lenses, the other for a computer controlling the camera along with a live diver interface and data storage.
After we finished testing the instrument in California, we traveled to Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel, to work with colleagues at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences.
With their help, we set up our system in the Red Sea’s well-preserved coral reefs.

In deploying the instrument, we use an undersea tripod to position the camera housing while resting the computer housing on the seafloor.
We then control the system’s parameters through a series of computer screens that culminate in recording the scene.

A newly visible underwater world

On our test dives, we saw with unprecedented detail a strange behavior of coral polyps, the tiny individual animals that make up a coral colony.
In a never-before-seen action, the polyps periodically embraced their neighbors, potentially to share food, in what we called polyp kissing.

In situ time series video of interaction between the coral Platygyra and four different stimuli.

In each frame Platygyra is on the left: top-left Galaxea, top right Stylophora, bottom left mesh net filled with Artemia, and bottom right another colony of Platygyra.

Images were captured at night with red light at a frame rate of 1 FPS. The playback is at a speed that is 480 times faster.

(Courtesy Andrew D. Mullen/UCSD) 

Not all of the interactions were so amorous; when we put different kinds of corals side by side, microscopic warfare broke out.
We were surprised to see that at the same proximity, corals of the same species were at peace.
This is shown in the lower right corner of the video – the two Platygyra corals are not fighting.

The polyp communities that share connective tissue work together to ward off predators.
They’re not hostile to other colonies of their own species.
But when confronted with foreigners, or when aiming to expand their territory, they can extrude their digestive organs and rub a digestive enzyme all over the bodies of their enemies, as seen in the videos.
We hypothesize, as others have, that some set of chemicals they emit mediates the corals' awareness of each other.

 The BUM was able to document algae beginning to colonize the surface of bleached corals that were still alive. 2.82 x 2.36 mm field-of-view. 

Andrew D. Mullen/UCSD

In a further investigation, this time in Hawaii, we used the Benthic Underwater Microscope to view the sad consequences of a large-scale bleaching event.
For the first time in a natural setting, we examined how algae colonize and overgrow bleached corals at the microscale.


Where to focus in the future
 
Now that we have this new instrument, hopefully it will open up a whole new realm of scientific inquiry.
We imagine researchers will be eager to point the underwater microscope at kelp forests, rocky reefs, sea grass beds and mangroves.
For instance, we’re interested in exploring how kelp propagate as microscopic baby kelp seeds land on rocky areas of the seafloor.
Their success and density is important for understanding how kelp forests emerge.
And there are plenty of other questions about coral reefs that the BUM could help investigate.
How do coral diseases progress?
What happens on a microscopic level when coral polyps bleach?
How do corals deal with sedimentation and shed sand?
How do coral larvae grow and how are they recruited by a colony?
How do corals and algae compete?

With the new ability to see and record these processes happening in real-time in the ocean, researchers could make some interesting new discoveries.
As such, we have made our systems available to the scientific community – we plan to aid researchers by traveling to their work sites and taking photos and videos.
And we’re always thinking about further improvements – developing a next generation of underwater instruments that have higher frame rates and even better resolution.
In addition, there is one enchanting frontier to think about: underwater microscopic virtual reality – an immersive new way for scientists and everyone else to explore the wonders of the oceans.

Links :

• WashingtonPost :  Watch incredible microscopic video of corals kissing, growing and fighting

 

Mining Gold

Mining Gold from Volte Wetsuits

West Australian coastline exploration on the first day of the Southern Hemisphere winter.