Windhoek
Fishermen still have to wait longer before they can start harvesting pilchards in Namibian waters because fish stocks are still at low levels, the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources announced last week.
The government a few years back instituted a moratorium on pilchard fishing due to its dwindling numbers, but this is set to continue. The fisheries permanent secretary Dr Moses Mahungirire said the pilchard stocks are yet to recover.
“Biomass surveys indicate that pilchard stocks have not yet recovered. Biomass surveys to determine the status of all commercial stocks inclusive of pilchard are conducted on an annual basis since independence,” said the PS. Before the moratorium, most of the pilchard quota was used for canning while small quantities were also sold for bait or processed into fishmeal.
Meanwhile, the fisheries ministry has slashed the total allowable catch (TAC) for hake, horse mackerel and rock lobster for the upcoming fishing season. With the new fishing season less than three months away, information minister Tjekero Tweya recently announced that Cabinet has set the TAC for the 2016 fishing season at a combined 478 696 metric tons (mt) for fish stocks such as hake, crab, rock lobster and horse mackerel.
The new fishing season will commence on January 1 2016 to December 31 2016.
The horse mackerel TAC, which was set at 350 000 mt the past three years, was slashed to 335 000 mt for next season while that of hake was slashed from 210 000 mt during the current season to 140 000 mt for 2016.
Rock lobster was also slashed from 300 mt to 250 mt.
Having been set at 3150 mt the past three years, the TAC for crab was pushed up to 3446 mt.
Tweya said the TAC for the popular species was slashed for conservation purposes. “We rely on our scientist who propose, based on scientific findings, the volumes we must harvest in order to sustainably manage our resources,” said Tweya.
In the past the TAC was also slashed to prevent overexploitation of fish stocks. Asked why the TAC of horse mackerel was slashed by 15 000 mt, Mahungirire said: “Even if the stock shows an increase, this soaring is mainly due to what we call non-fishable biomass or undersize fish. The legal size has proven to be on the reduced side.”
Horse mackerel is one of the few fish species found in local waters that the average Namibian can afford because of the high prices of species such as rock lobster, crab and hake.
Now that the TAC has been set for the upcoming fishing season, it will be distributed among the right holders in each fishery in the form of quotas.
The fishing industry is one of the sectors that employs a large number of people, employing about 13 000 onshore and seagoing workers.