The most important data contained in the interview transcripts were respondents’ perceptions of (1) causes of the coastal fisheries crisis; and (2) remedies for overcoming the crisis. Many respondents framed the causes in terms of ‘scapegoats’ whom they blamed for the crisis, and the remedies in terms of ‘panaceas’ which they looked to for rescue. We have divided the Results section into perceived scapegoats and perceived panaceas. However, first, we note that respondents perceived the fisheries as being in a crisis situation: KI-14, an academic marine scientist, said “We have gone through hell in this country and we are now all of us in ‘survival mode’. Our system is unfair and unequal: it defies all your principles because we are all struggling to live at least to see the next day. So how to survive now is more important than thinking about tomorrow”. Respondents also testified to their dependence on the fisheries: “it is our very important source of protein that the commonest man can afford. It brings income, employment: our local fisheries has employed over 50% of our youths, it is very important to us” [KI-4, fish processor].
4.1. Scapegoats
We found five main scapegoats in the interview transcripts: foreigners, industrial fishers, artisanal fishers, fishers’ unions, and (most of all) the government.
4.1.1. Foreigners
A familiar trope in the scapegoat literature is the characterisation of foreigners as scapegoats. KI-5, a fisheries officer, asked, rhetorically, “Sierra Leone happens to be one of the least developed countries of the world…so why do foreigners come to plunder our resources?” KI-13, a fisher, said “the problem is that the foreign fishermen are evil-minded people, they attack our fishermen, they take all the fish in our water” KIs in Sierra Leone identified three types of foreigners as scapegoats: Chinese, Westerners, and West Africans. On the Chinese, KI-11, a fish merchant, said Chinese vessels sneakily fish at night to avoid detection: “These Chinese fishermen do not fish during the day, they fish only at night when we have all slept…we come out at midnight to watch these big boats steal our fish”. KI-6, a fisheries scientist, claimed the Chinese criminally falsified their paperwork to pretend the fish they catch in Sierra Leone’s waters come from China:
“Sierra Leone says if you catch fish from our water, you must label the carton ‘product from SL’, but if you look in the Chinese vessels their cartons are all labelled ‘products from China’. This is why China is always saying that they ‘have the largest export of fish’, because they are catching fish from all over the world and writing ‘product from China’…So it is criminality that some Chinese still use the Chinese label for our fish”.
KI-4, a fish processor, said: “Chinese are bad fishermen, they fish illegally and cause so much problems for our fishermen. They are not good people”. On Westerners, KI-5, a ministry official, accused the World Bank of cheating the country by forcing a wealth creation strategy on Sierra Leone’s fisheries governance rather than a food security strategy which the fishers wanted: “The World Bank will not listen to us [the marine]—they do not consult us. It is disheartening to say that that $70,000 which could have been spent on other development programmes in Sierra Leone was spent on paying consultants from abroad. The west will always cheat us blacks”. KI-21, a village head, criticised western trawlers for over-fishing in Sierra Leone’s waters: “Western countries should help us and not carry away all our fish”. KI-9, a senior harbour master, accused the West of manufacturing harmful fishing nets: “talk to the western world to stop producing these nets. If they are not producing, we won’t buy them…The net is evil…The west should stop producing monofilament and other bad nets”. On West Africans, KI-10, an assistant harbour master, held that “Guinea has the world’s worst fishermen, they corrupted our fishermen”.
However, there was some pushback against scapegoating of foreigners. For example, KI-6, an academic marine scientist, said foreign fishing companies provided loans, gear and employment to Sierra Leoneans, and paid large licence fees to the government:
“In fact, some fishers get support—they get loans from these foreigners. The Koreans buy boats and fishing gears for some of them and so when the fishers catch fish they sell particular species to them… the foreigners pay better and I know fishers want them to buy their fish…some [Koreans] do not catch but buy because they target inshore fish and if they buy trawlers they will not be allowed to fish inshore. So they now support artisanal fishers to fish for them because they are not prevented from fishing inshore…At least 45% of their crew are our people…The industrial sector is contributing foreign exchange for the country, we know for instance that the Tuna vessel pays something like 45,000 dollars per year. From…2010 to last year, revenue collection for this sector has moved from 6 million Leones a year to 57 billion Leones per year…So fisheries is now one of the three revenue earners for government”.
Likewise, KI-8, an outreach fisheries officer, said: “the Koreans are helping the fishermen make more money”. Similar remarks were made by KI-9, a senior harbour master, and KI-12, a community management association (CMA) executive. Moreover, several respondents praised foreign organisations and NGOs for the support they gave to artisanal fishers. For example, KI-9, a senior harbour master, said: “The only development we see are those built or brought in by foreigners or the World Bank or the African Development Bank...Sometimes some NGOs come here to work for us, almost every good thing you see like the fish processing unit were built by foreigners. Even workshops are sponsored by foreigners…These foreign NGOs empower me more than our government”.
4.1.2. Industrial Fishers
Much of the animus against foreigners was because they used large-scale vessels with big trawls to engage in ‘industrial’ fishing, and instead of confining themselves to offshore areas in Sierra Leone’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) they came illegally into inshore areas within the inshore economic zone (IEZ) which were designated exclusively for small-scale fishers (SSF). KI-12, a CMA executive, claimed “The industrial fishermen no longer fancy fishing at the EEZ, now they fish at the IEZ where the local fishers fish. These industrial vessels end up cutting the nets of local fishermen and they do not pay for such damages”. KI-20, a local councillor, said “they tell our fishermen to take them to court because they have more money and opportunity to win any court case… It is pure cheating, they [industrial fishers] are taking advantage of us [local fishermen]. Some of these fishermen are not working now because their nets are damaged by the trawlers…Artisanal fishers are indigenes and by right should have and enjoy more fishing rights than the trawler people”. KI-21, a village head, said “Sometimes, you can pursue the case for 1-2 years and nothing comes out of it…they [industrial fishers] are wicked because they don’t consider how…fisherman will survive without nets.”. KI-7, a fisher, claimed industrial trawlers were also responsible for large-scale discarding of unwanted fish: “Because they like big fish, when they catch small fish small fish that is by-catch, they just throw it back into the sea. This is a serious problem because the fish will float and as long as other fish see that they avoid the area”. KI-9, a senior harbour master, said industrial fishers fish in breeding areas: “They are wicked and mad because they fish in estuaries where fish breeds, if the trawler comes trawling inside here it spoils the fish egg because this is a breeding zone”. KI-21, a village head, said “They are destroying our fisheries”. KI-5, a ministry official, said “unregulated and unreported fishing…is largely because of industrial vessels coming into our shores to plunder our resources”. KI-14, an academic researcher, said illegal industrial fishing cost the country millions of dollars’ worth of lost fish: “There is an estimate that we lose about 9 million dollars yearly from illegal fishing”.
KI-20, a local councillor, claimed that the observers on board industrial vessels were paid by the vessel owners, so they did not report violations: “This is why the marine observers always support the foreign trawlers. This is…why we do not have any witness to confirm our damage—all the marine observers work for the interest of foreign trawlers”. As a result, KI-14, an academic marine scientist, said the fisheries data they had to work with were inadequate: “The reports we get from the observers are very scanty, and there is very little or nothing to make out from it”. KI-14 also said that the transponders which the government installed on industrial vessels to monitor their movements 24 h a day were easily circumvented: “the problem is that sometimes they turn them off. The…people that manage the vessels…do this when they want to steal and they will tell you that there was a problem somewhere”.
On the other hand, some respondents defended industrial fishers. For example, KI-14, despite his criticisms, offered this counter-attack: “It is industrial fishing that gives revenue to this country, it is much better organized than the artisanal fishing. The industrial sector has people that take detailed records of the catch, the time it was caught, the species, everything is well documented”.
4.1.3. Artisanal Fishers
KI-15, a senior fisheries officer, argued that artisanal fishers were worse than industrial fishers: “Our [artisanal] fishermen do illegal fishing so much even more than the industrial people”. Some interviewees blamed artisanal fishers for the fisheries crisis because they caught small fish. KI-15 claimed: “The worst set of people are the artisanal fishers…They say that the industrial people are their problems but they [artisanal fishers] enjoy catching juveniles and we have been telling them to stop”. KI-16, an outreach fisheries officer, claimed “Our fishermen are very stubborn, they know the right thing to do, but they will never do it. When they do things that are not correct, they know… they know what they are doing, they just don’t want to abide by the rule”. KI-5, a ministry official, asserted that some artisanal fishers were delusional: “some of our people argue that that ‘fish comes from the sky’, they don’t think the stock can be overexploited that is why they overfish”. KI-8, an outreach fisheries officer, demonised artisanal fishers as wicked and destructive:
“Honestly, the worst job on earth is to control fishermen—they are wicked and stubborn. They will not take instructions… We try to enforce these laws on the fishermen but still these fishermen will not abide to this law…I think they are naturally hardened…they are not law-abiding people…Local people do not know how to manage things, they want to be in control of this building, I mean the office that we are in now. But we know that when it is handed over to them, they will destroy it and spoil most of the facilities in it…some of them [fishers] will tell you we [the marine] have locked the cold room but if you leave it open, they will destroy everything that is inside. We [the marine], will not lock up the cold rooms without reasons”.
KI-1, an administrator at SLAFU, said “Our people fish in areas that fishing should not be done especially in the breeding grounds-the estuarine”. KI-3, a secretary of SLAFU, accused artisanal fishers of using small-mesh nets: “When they go to fish they catch small fish and even fish eggs… [They] are killing the ecosystem”. KI-9, a senior harbour master, held that “The evil fishermen terrorise our fish breeding ground…Our fishermen still use that bad method even after their nets were seized and burnt they replaced them with another bad net”. KI-20, a local councillor, said fishers in Tumbo hide their nets: “Tumbo is big, it has small villages and so fishermen…go to sea and catch fish and then hide their nets in their many corners. It is hard to completely monitor fishing in a place like Tumbo”. KI-6, a fisheries scientist, said artisanal fishers even used poison. KI-7, a fisher, said “About 80% of fishermen do bad fishing”. KI-12, a CMA executive, stated “More than 80% are illiterates they do not agree that one day the fish will finish”. KI-13, a fisher, sees artisanal fishers as ‘wicked’: “It is wickedness…Wickedness is the main reason. People think it is poverty, but it is not”.
KI-3, secretary of SLAFU, blamed artisanal fishers for blackmailing politicians into protecting them: “’We will vote for you, but Marine is disturbing us, they want to seize our net, if you don’t stop them we will not vote for you’. This sort of talk scare our politicians”. Likewise, KI-7, a fisher, said “Fishing is where everybody in Tumbo earn their living. If government stop people and do not provide alternatives, our people will vote them out”. KI-3, secretary of SLAFU reported that artisanal fishers were sometimes violent towards authorities: “We have been beaten here before by the fishermen because we seized their boats. One of us was beaten to coma, if not for the help of people around I would have been long forgotten because their intention was to kill us”. Likewise, KI-10, assistant harbour master, reported that “here in Yoribe, to Shenge bad fishermen are unstoppable and they will fight you. About four years ago, this brought serious fight in Shenge the fishermen almost killed the people that tried to stop them. They beat up these officials mercilessly”.
However, some respondents defended the artisanal sector on grounds of sectoral poverty. For example, KI-3, secretary of SLAFU, said “Poverty is everywhere in our community and that is why people are fishing illegally”. Likewise, KI-10, assistant harbour master, said “Poverty is a…very big reason why people defy laws. Poverty makes some very stubborn…It is hard to survive here in Sierra Leone, we are a very poor country…the pressure of survival causes them to think this way”. KI-7, a fisher, agreed: “poverty is a big problem…our people depend so much on fishing and there is no substitute yet…it is very difficult to stop them from fishing any way because they have to feed their families and they have responsibilities. It is very difficult to stop them from using bad gears”.
4.1.4. Rivalry between Fishers’ Unions
Several respondents blamed conflict between the two fishers’ unions—Sierra Leone Artisanal Fishers’ Union (SLAFU) and Sierra Leone Artisanal Amalgamated Fishers’ Union (SLAAFU)—for the dire condition of the country’s coastal fisheries. SLAFU was established with governmental support 20 years ago to represent the interests of artisanal fishers in their relations with management and judicial systems. SLAAFU was established with governmental support over 11 years ago by fishers who were disgruntled with the performance of SLAFU in looking after their interests, not least because of allegations of misuse of a fund collected from fishers’ dues paid to the harbour master, and there has been bitter rivalry between the two organisations ever since. KI-4, a fish processor, said “there is no unity between these two unions…Every day they fight each other”. KI-10, an assistant harbour master who supported SLAFU, said this division undermined SLAFU’s efforts to curb illegal fishing: “The SLAFU had a difficult time fighting bad fishermen because these bad fishers have government support. So when SLAFU is saying ‘please don’t fish using bad method’, the SLAAFU who are bad fishermen will say ‘use bad method’ and the government supports SLAAFU”. KI-12, a CMA executive who also supported SLAFU, said “SLAFU are good people that are helping our fisheries, SLAAFU are not good they only collect money from channel fishermen and as CMA, we do not acknowledge them. SLAAFU separated from SLAFU because they want to be getting money from illegal fishermen. I don’t know why the government registered them as an organisation under our fisheries because they are destroying it for us. They support bad fishermen”.
KI-14, an academic marine scientist, said the union conflict made a viable relationship between artisanal fishers and the government impossible: “SLAFU people and SLAAFU people do not have a strong relationship with the ministry. SLAFU or SLAAFU cannot say precisely how they are helping the ministry to manage their resources efficiently. They do not speak to each other…The ministry and fisheries organisations should be working in harmony, so that important information about fisheries can be passed down to the fishing families because they are all part of the chain…but the reality…is that the link between the ministry and the locals is missing”.
However, several respondents defended the unions against scapegoating, saying the blame for the conflict between them lay with the government. For example, KI-21, a village head who supported SLAAFU, claimed the government favoured SLAFU and failed to recognise the good work being done by SLAAFU in engaging with ‘bad’ fishers such as the channel or estuary fisherman rather than ostracising them which was SLAFU’s policy:
“Our government is just talking from their office; they are not empowering our fishermen to change to good fishing. You see our government supports SLAFU and they [SLAFU] also have channel fishermen…Is this a union? No, a union must consider everybody and then begin the change from inside. SLAAFU is a better union because they picked every fisherman whether good or bad and they are changing them gradually”.
KI-21, a village head, said the government was directly responsible for the conflict between SLAFU and SLAAFU by encouraging the development of rival fishers’ unions: “Because they don’t want the local fishermen to come together…they are… ‘giving that union certificate, giving another union certificate’. Now the fishermen are divided…Who is the cause? It is the government because they don’t want us to come together…What they want is to put division between us, now the two unions are fighting themselves”. KI-7, a fisher, said this is a classic tactic of divide and rule: “This is the tactics government use to divide us [artisanal fishermen] and now we don’t have a common voice. Some belong to SLAFU others SLAAFU”. KI-3, secretary of SLAFU, said the government would not cooperate with SLAFU to combat illegal fishing: “The Director [of the Marine] has refused to work with us”. KI-3 said the government set up the CMAs to undermine SLAFU: “the CMA was formed to destroy our organisation because most CMA members were already our members and now we cannot control the CMA executive that use bad fishing method… [and] some of their leaders are government agents”.
4.1.5. Government
Following on from the last point, the most frequent scapegoat was the government. KI-7, a fisher, said “our government is responsible for all the problems”. KI-1, an administrator at SLAFU, said “our politicians frustrate whatever efforts are made to better our fisheries here…politics is an acute problem that is destroying our fishing sector… The politician counts his success as winning election not repairing our fisheries”. KI-10, an assistant harbour master, said “Our government…put politics first before our fish”. KI-3, a secretary of SLAFU stated “They are using fish to bargain for their [political] parties. Sierra Leone government don’t love the country, they only love their parties”. KI-3, a secretary of SLAFU, blamed the government for keeping the people in poverty: “we keep saying Sierra Leone is a poor country. it is not poor, it is a rich country with poor people. Sierra Leone has over 32 different types of mineral resources but the people are poor. our problem is bad government. On the issue of fishing regulations, our politicians have stopped every form of enforcement for their own interest”.
For example, KI-9, a senior harbour master, said the government failed to curb illegal industrial fishing: “Our joint surveillance team has not done anything to stop or even reduce the number of illegal trawlers that cause problems for us here. These illegal trawlers are increasing by the day”. KI-11, a fish merchant, said “My problem with them [the marine] is that they do not take action when we report that industrial fishermen are disturbing us here”. KI-13, a fisher, said the government favoured industrial fishers because they paid bribes: “The marine care only about the trawler fishermen that bribe them, they do not regard the local fishermen like me. The trawler fishermen are thieves and the marine works with them”. KI-7, a fisher, said government officials took bribes from foreign fishers: “Our government is hypocritical about foreign vessels because of bribery… They collect bribes from these foreigners… These foreigners bribe government agents with dollars, pounds sterling…There are good laws in the book, but…because of bribery they are overlooked”. KI-8, an outreach fisheries officer, claimed “The major problem with the marine and navy surveillance is that we discovered that both our Marine and Navy representatives work secretly with these industrial fishermen. They give our intelligence to these foreigners and then collect cash”.
The government was also accused of failing to curb illegal artisanal fishing. KI-12, a CMA executive, claimed the government politicised fish by treating artisanal fishers leniently in order to get their votes: “The whole of our fishing sector is politicised by politicians…Everything in the fisheries is politicised…The present government is only interested in votes and not fish and they have told fishermen to fish anyhow and vote for them”. KI-10, an assistant harbour master, explained how politicians protect offenders from prosecution: “Politicians have spoilt everything. They like people to vote for them and because of this they sometimes fight the marine officials that stop bad fishing. If any bad fisherman that is a friend to a politician calls the politician saying, ‘they [the marine] seized my net’, the politician will stop the official immediately…This is why our fishing here is very bad and it is getting worse”. KI-3, a secretary of SLAFU, said “political interference is the main cause of all our problems”. Likewise, KI-12, a CMA executive, said “Without the political will to stop bad fishing nothing will change”. KI-6, an academic researcher, said “the government is killing the sector”. KI-1 said the government thereby put the lives of SLAFU members in danger: “when government gives fishers the right to fish illegally, attempts to stop them resulted in us receiving great beatings of our lives, so we have to be careful…. The fishermen almost killed some of us, they beat one of us to coma, it was God that saved his life”.
KI-7, a fisher, said politicians were appointed minister of fisheries because of their political connections, not their knowledge of fisheries: “They make these idiots minister of fisheries even when they don’t know anything”. KI-15, a senior fisheries officer, criticised the government for lack of investment in the fisheries sector. KI-5, a ministry official, admitted that “last year there was no budgetary allocation to fisheries. Since 2011, we have not done any fish stock assessment, even to collect data on landing site is a very big problem…The government does not want to invest in the fisheries sector”. Inadequate funding meant lack of fisheries data, and some respondents blamed the lack of reliable data on fishing activity for the dire condition of the stocks. As KI-14, an academic marine scientist, put it, “without the data you cannot manage your resources”. KI-5, a ministry scientist, said neither the industrial sector nor the artisanal sector provided trustworthy data on their catches. In the case of the industrial sector, catch data came from on-board observers who were paid by the vessels’ owners, not by the government, which raised a question mark about the veracity of their data reports. As a result, KI-14 said the fisheries data they had to work with from the industrial sector were inadequate: “The reports we get from the observers are very scanty, and there is very little or nothing to make out from it”. In the case of the artisanal sector, “we have not got the adequate funding to have a random distribution of enumerators, if not in all, the landing sites” (KI-14). Hence, said KI-5, “We only have researchers that come up with assumptions all the time, that is not research…if you want to make a sound assessment or recommendation, it should be based on sound research”. KI-14 said “it is only when we have this [data], that one can see the extent of how communities have wrecked the fisheries”. Lack of data is perceived by respondents as a failure by government to provide the resources needed to obtain information. KI-5, a senior fisheries official, said under-investment was economic illiteracy, because a World Bank report stated that “if our government can invest as little as £5 million yearly in our fisheries with effective management we can make over 50 million dollars plus”.
KI-10, an assistant harbour master, said fishers did not trust the government because in 2008, the Minister of Fisheries, Hajiya Aishatu Kabal, confiscated and burnt their bad nets but broke her promise to replace them free with good nets, and fishers had to buy the good nets: “Now tell me how our fishermen can trust their government again. About 50–60 fishermen from this community were deceived and they submitted their nets for nothing…Our government are liars and nobody…will ever trust them again”. Similar statements were made by KI-7, a fisher, and KI-3, secretary of SLAFU.
However, some respondents defended the government. For example, KI-9, a senior harbour master, claimed “The marine are helping us whenever we take our problems to them. Like our complaints about the trawlers that are disturbing us, they do their best to drive them outside of the IEZ. They allow organisations to come in and help us the fishermen, so marine is very helpful”. KI-4, a fish processor, said “The government assists them because the money from licences that they collect from our local fishermen are what they put back for the development of our community”. KI-2, a chandler, sympathised with the government’s dilemma in having to make hard choices: “Our government has to balance or choose between destroying the ecosystem or the life of our poor people”. KI-10, an assistant harbour master, explained that the government was understandably reluctant to exert force on artisanal fishers for fear of re-igniting civil war hostilities: “when we planned to go and fight them at the sea our government said ’No’ and some other people thought it was not a good idea because we just came out of a civil war and fighting these bad fishermen might cause another war and then it will affect our country again”.
4.2. Panaceas
Turning to the concept of panaceas, we found three main panaceas in the interview transcripts: coercion; sensitisation; and co-management. There is a sense in which each of these three panaceas is broadly linked to a particular transgressor: coercion to curb the industrial sector (though also the artisanal sector); sensitisation to reform the artisanal sector; and co-management to put pressure on the government.
4.2.1. Coercion
Several respondents claimed that what is needed is coercion to force both industrial and artisanal fishers to comply with the law. KI-5, a senior fisheries officer, said “We are concerned about illegal fishing…ensuring that sanctions are strong enough to serve as deterrence… [to] illegal fishing in all forms not only on the side of the industrial fishers but also on the side of the small-scale fisheries”. KI-15, another senior fisheries officer, said fishers respond to force: “our people like it when you use force on them and trust me you will succeed…if we use the military and the police we will succeed because we tried it in 2009 and almost succeeded, but because of this political interference everything died down and returned back to zero”. KI-16, a fisheries officer in Tumbo, said coercion does work. KI-21, a village head, claimed that force used by the government in 2008 had a lasting effect on fishers’ behaviour in Goderich. KI-7, a fisher, said “government…have the laws and if they stand very hard against these evil fishermen, our water will be good”. KI-8, an outreach fisheries officer, said
“I want the government to create very strict laws, harder laws. I mean laws that are harder than the law that governs Sierra Leone. I am proposing this because if you talk about people that are very stubborn and difficult to deal with they are the fishermen. They are hardened...Honestly I am tired of this kind of people…We try to enforce these laws on the fishermen but still these fishermen will not abide to this law except they are punished…if they [the government] are serious and start arresting bad fishermen, others will stop”.
He rejected the ‘excuse’ for illegal artisanal fishing that they were poor and had no choice if they were to feed their families: “The mistake so many people make is to say that poverty is the reason why these people do all these things… [Some] fishers do not abide to the law because of poverty, but not all of them are poor. I think they are naturally hardened”.
KI-1, an administrator in SLAFU, claimed if the government used force to support the efforts of SLAFU, illegal artisanal fishing would end overnight: “if the government sincerely makes up its mind and says ‘this area is a no- go area, whoever goes there will be punished’, I know our fishermen will rethink and then stop fishing in wrong areas…Government has all the machinery to fight irresponsible fishing”. Likewise, KI-10, an assistant harbour master, said “if government empowers us at the grassroots we can handle them [bad fishermen] better. All we need is a good surveillance boat and soldiers on board to kill these fishermen if they mess up. It is simple! If we want fishermen to fish well, we must learn to enforce laws”. KI-11, a fish merchant, said the CMA was preparing itself to use force against illegal fishing:
“This time we are planning to also have soldiers on board. It will not only be our CMA officials like in the past. The Navy will accompany us and arrest all bad fishermen that are caught in the act…At some point in life you have to face your enemy in whatever form it comes. We are the ones directly affected, we are first hand witnesses of this problem so we cannot allow it to continue. Our unborn children will not have fish if we do not act fast and now”.
KI-3, a secretary of SLAFU, said “Sierra Leonese people are very easy to control, only set an example with one, the others will be afraid to commit the same offence”.
However, one respondent rejected coercion as a panacea for stopping illegal fishing, KI-12 said coercion did not work: “we cannot force bad fishermen to stop, we can only continue to explain the dangers of bad fishing to them”.
4.2.2. Sensitisation
Many fishers claim the solution lies in persuading artisanal fishers to abandon their illegal methods of fishing. This solution is framed in terms of an extensive ‘sensitisation programme’ (KI-3, secretary of SLAFU). KI-15, a senior fisheries official, explained that it worked best when it targeted young fishers:
“Everywhere, you go in the world, fishermen are stubborn. Some of them cannot accept laws easily except you continue to cajole them, be nice to them, play with them, then some might consider you and say ‘ok, it is true, what you have said is the right thing’. But it is not easy. When I was at Conor, I always go out to do sensitisation and one of my strategies is to work with the youths because they are so much involved in fishing activities….I always engage them, talk to them the importance of fisheries, the way it was before and now the difference. I always sit with them and explain to them the problems and the losses their parents are encountering now and so by doing so, I achieved a lot. In some communities, I succeeded because you know young people can talk to their parents and the parents listen to them, this strategy worked well in some of our communities”.
SLAFU made the sensitisation programme its central focus, as KI-1, an administrator in SLAFU, affirmed: “We take the sensitisation of fishers as our priority, we always call meetings to educate our local fishermen about the meaning and also the effects of bad fishing”. KI-3, secretary of SLAFU, said “We have made them to see that the consequences of overfishing will be bad for them and their future generations. We have made them to see how difficult it is to replenish fish stocks: we have asked them very hard questions about their future without fish”. This is a major initiative, and SLAFU has drawn on both internal and external organisations to support its sensitisation activities. Internally, it has collaborated with the community management associations (CMAs), as KI-3 noted: “We [SLAFU] are working with them [CMA] on the sensitisation of local fishermen-we have been talking to local fishermen to see reasons why they should stop bad methods of fishing”. Externally, SLAFU has benefitted from funding by the West African Association for the Development of Artisanal Fisheries [WADAF], as KI-1, an administrator with SLAFU, explained:
“Seven African countries (Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone and Cape Verde) all belong to an umbrella organisation called the ‘West African Association for the Development of Artisanal Fisheries’ (WADAF). The aim of this organisation is to help clean up the artisanal sector of member countries. Here in Sierra Leone, our membership of WADAF has helped us a great deal…they are working to help our artisanal fisheries sector here, they want to see that the current situation is under control…WADAF gave us a small amount of money to add to what we have…This money will be used for sensitising the people to stop illegal fishing”.
Additionally, the World Bank has funded SLAFU’s sensitisation programme: “the World Bank project managed by Dr Sankoh…has given us about 60 million Leones to do sensitisation. We completed this and gave out reports to the World Bank, we did sensitisation in Shenge, Bond and here in Tumbo and some of our colleagues got money from the same source to do sensitisations in the north” [KI-1].
However, some respondents said fishers were resistant to sensitisation programmes. For example, KI-15, a senior fisheries officer, said “Our fishermen are too wicked…I think it is illiteracy because whatever you tell them to do they always see it as force: ‘you want to force me to do something’…It is hard to work with fishermen”. Moreover, some respondents questioned SLAFU’s credentials as a sensitisation agency. For example, KI-13, a fisher, said “SLAFU is not a good organisation, they are not helping us. They do not consult me as the master fisherman, they do their things alone. I and some people from our CMA do not identify with them”. Likewise, KI-9, a senior harbour master, said SLAFU did not communicate with fishers on the ground: “They fail to organise the grassroots; they fail to call for meetings”.
4.2.3. Co-Management
Several respondents argued for co-management between the government and local communities as the panacea. KI-7, a fisher, wanted to restrict top-down management to a minimum: “There should be very minimal political interference in the fisheries otherwise it will forever damage our fisheries. Government come and go, but fish is our life wire”. KI-5, a senior ministry official, explained that the creation of the CMAs was an attempt to involve local communities in fisheries management:
“under the fisheries act, power was devolved to the communities…The whole idea is we think that fisheries governance should not be coming from the top alone, it should be interactive. To this end, we thought that the active involvement of the fishermen and the local communities will be useful. This was why we established the CMAs, that was why we devolved the licencing and management of artisanal fishing to the local council in anticipation that things will be fine”.
KI-15, a senior fisheries officer, explained how the CMA was set up by the fisheries ministry with foreign aid as a co-management system:
“through the support of the ‘West African Regional Fisheries Programme’, sponsored by the World Bank, we tried to form co-management. That is, we formed links between the fishermen and other stakeholders involved in fisheries management like the fish processors, transporters, timber cutters, boat carpenters. We do not go to the communities to impose laws and rules on fishermen. We thought it fit that they should form their organisations though we helped them organise themselves”.
KI-12, a CMA executive, claimed the CMA was a vital element of fisheries co-management, carrying out functions that the government was unable to perform by itself:
“You see the CMA is a very important part of co-management…This is co-management to help us manage our own resources…One of the reasons marine developed the CMA was because of harassment that they face because whenever they come down to the community our people disturb them a lot saying ‘you don’t remember us, you did this and you did that, the marine is not good’… Marine is good to us, our relationship is cordial”.
KI-16, a local fisheries officer, said CMAs know their communities much better than the government does: “Community surveillance is important and it is not just for the Navy, or our staff [fisheries ministry], we need to include the community people too. So this is why it is important because they know how to talk to their people, they know the problems in their communities”. However, KI-21, a village head, said the CMAs needed more resources to do their job properly:
“They [government] have said that they want to hand over the fisheries to us [CMA], but in what conditions? We have complained several times to them that we need surveillance boats but they have refused to provide it. We [CMA], are not magicians, we cannot appear in the sea and stop bad fishermen, we need surveillance boats. There is need for proper logistics and it is only us the fishermen that can do this monitoring very well because the Navy collects bribes from illegal trawlers, they are no longer trustworthy”.
Likewise, KI-3, secretary of SLAFU said “There is need to empower the CMA because they need logistics to have people in the sea to chase illegal fishermen. These fishermen need to be chased because if you don’t chase them they will not stop”.
However, on claims that co-management between the government and the CMAs was a panacea for illegal fishing, KI-10, an assistant harbour master, poured cold water, claiming CMA staff were themselves engaged in illegal fishing: “They are not leading by example and how do you expect them to change other people? The kind of people we have as CMA executives are examples of bad fishermen. They promote bad fishing because they are bad fishermen themselves, they put money first before good fishing”.