Around midnight, a Namibian vessel’s radar picks up a notorious foreign trawler intruding into its waters. The vessel quickly alerts the Fisheries Monitoring Centre in Walvis Bay, prompting the Navy and fisheries department to respond. However, due to the absence of enforcement vessels near the Namibia-Angola maritime border, the illegal trawler escapes undetected.
This scenario is not uncommon. According to Carina Bruwer, senior researcher with the Enhancing Africa’s Response to Transnational Organized Crime project, Namibia has recently failed to apprehend or prosecute any suspicious vessels.
Foreign fishing vessels, particularly Chinese trawlers, frequently target Namibia’s rich marine resources. These illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) activities deplete stocks of horse mackerel, hake, kingklip, and dentex, costing Namibia over $83.7 million annually, exacerbating food insecurity, and threatening the livelihoods of more than 18,000 people employed in the fisheries sector.
China ranks as the world’s worst offender in illegal fishing, with eight of the top ten global IUU fishing companies based there, according to the IUU Fishing Risk Index.
Matti Amukwa, chairperson of the Confederation of Namibian Fishing Associations, has called for urgent action.
“For too long, outsiders have raped our Namibian fish stocks,” he wrote in a letter to the Ministry of Fisheries. “We need immediate intervention to halt the destruction caused by these well-known IUU vessels. We cannot depend on other governments to protect our resources.”
Illegal operators often abuse loopholes by registering foreign-owned and operated vessels under African countries’ flags, a practice known as “flagging in” or using “flags of convenience,” allowing them to evade financial charges and strict regulations. Many such vessels operating in Namibian waters fly Angolan flags.
In 2022, officials seized a Russian trawler owned by a Chinese company carrying 300 tons of horse mackerel near Angola’s Namibe Province during the closed fishing season. Angola loses about $227 million annually to illegal fishing.
These foreign trawlers use shell companies, front companies, and joint ventures to mask their operations, complicating investigations and prosecutions. Armando Filipe, a member of an Angolan artisanal fishing cooperative, lamented the wasteful and destructive practices of these vessels.
“They catch excessive quantities and often discard what they cannot process back into the sea,” he told Voice of America.
In addition, vessels flying flags of convenience from countries like Cameroon – popular among Russian operators – routinely turn off their Automatic Identification Systems before entering Namibian waters. After looting fish stocks, they reactivate the systems and sail back to Angola, where the catch is illegally transshipped. When denied port entry in Namibia, these vessels dock in Cape Town without fish onboard, making evidence gathering difficult for authorities.
Despite these challenges, Bruwer highlighted the recently launched Southern African Development Community (SADC) Atlantic Project as a promising initiative to combat illegal fishing. The project seeks to enhance cross-border cooperation between Angola, Namibia, and South Africa and has developed a risk register to identify suspicious vessels before they enter ports.
However, Bruwer emphasised that for the initiative to be fully effective, it must be supported by:
– Strengthened law enforcement at sea,
– Refusal by states to flag or license suspicious vessels, and
– Policies mandating disclosure of vessel ownership to ensure accountability.
Credit: ABS
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