Who’s behind Sierra Leone’s illegal fishing problem?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Good morning.

**Ed Butler** (0:03)
Good morning.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
Morning, morning. How is your head?

**Ed Butler** (0:06)
My head is all right. It's my stomach I'm worrying about. Thank you.
Hello, and welcome to Business Daily. My name is Ed Butler, and today, I'm going to see. To see, off the coast of Sierra Leone, West Africa, to be precise, where fishing for local people has become an increasingly challenging business.

**Thomas Turay** (0:45)
They do stealing, poaching, they clear our nets here. Some of us even died through that.

**Ed Butler** (0:51)
People were killed?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:52)
Illegal fishing is too much here.

**Thomas Turay** (0:55)
If we hadn't been here, there should have been no fish.

**Ed Butler** (0:58)
West Africa's illegal fishing trade and its consequences and Business Daily from the BBC.
So we're coming along the beach here, virgin sand, and there is nothing on it, except the occasional dugout canoe from the fishermen who live here and who go out in these tiny vessels hewn from the trunks of trees. They go out miles to cast their nets.

**Thomas Turay** (1:38)
6 o'clock.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:39)
6 in the morning.

**Ed Butler** (1:40)
You go out at 6 And you're just in one of these little wooden dugout skiffs?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:44)
Yeah, for fishing.

**Ed Butler** (1:47)
How deep can you go in one of those in the open Atlantic?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:49)
Yeah, yeah. We used to go more than 3 hours out sea.
They leave the shore and be more than 3 hours out sea. It's only this ocean that supplies their living or feed them.

**Ed Butler** (2:05)
I'm on the island of Sherbro, off the southern coast of Sierra Leone. The entire community here lives off marine resources one way or another. Herring, snapper, the abundant prawns that lurk within the mangroves. Thomas Turay is president of the Sierra Leone Fishermen's Union.
How long have you been a fisherman?

**Thomas Turay** (2:26)
Since I was born, because my father was a fisherman.
He got the fishing money to marry my mum. He gave back to me. I attended school. Then I started selling fish for my mum, Alquendu.

**Ed Butler** (2:40)
So tell me about the life of a fisherman. Is it a good life?

**Thomas Turay** (2:46)
Their gratuity is sickness and pneumonia.

**Ed Butler** (2:49)
Really?

**SPEAKER_1** (2:49)
Yes.

**Ed Butler** (2:51)
You get sick all the time.

**Thomas Turay** (2:52)
You get sick.

**Ed Butler** (2:53)
Is it a dangerous profession?

**SPEAKER_1** (2:55)
A dangerous job, actually.

**Thomas Turay** (2:57)
It's got money if you are lucky. If you are not lucky, it is dangerous.

**Ed Butler** (3:01)
But this is like, the fish is most people's source of protein, right? It's how people get their strength.

**Thomas Turay** (3:07)
Yes. Without fish, we could have been dead people. We could have been somehow cheaper.

**Ed Butler** (3:12)
Fish is the staple food for us in Sierra Leone.
People travel from across the country to buy the fish from coastal markets like this one. But it seems the abundant catch from these rich waters is beginning to dwindle. In front of me is a bunch of guys dragging in a huge net. Onto the sand. How big is that net?

**SPEAKER_1** (3:45)
It's more than 200 metres.

**Ed Butler** (3:47)
Wow, a 200 metre net. So they cast that one out and then in the morning they're pulling it in. And you can see the fish wriggling inside.
There's a woman here. She's picking among the jellyfish. Just to pull out some of the smallest sardines, are they? Just to go into her bucket. Everything will get eaten, except the jellyfish. Is this a good catch?
This is a small catch, is it? Do you know... What's your name, madam? What's your name?

**Thomas Turay** (4:33)
Marie-Pierre.

**Ed Butler** (4:35)
Marie-Pierre.

**Thomas Turay** (4:36)
Marie-Pierre.

**Ed Butler** (4:40)
Marie-Pierre explains to me the problems the fishing communities are facing, most especially, she says, from the large foreign fishing boats that seem to be arriving here in ever larger numbers. There's supposed to be a seven-mile coastal exclusion zone off the shoreline here reserved for the local boats.
But trawlers keep coming in, she says, and cutting the fishermen's nets at night to steal their catch. Thomas Turay, the Union Chief, confirms this account as well.

**SPEAKER_1** (5:09)
The illegal fishing is too much here.

**Thomas Turay** (5:12)
If we hadn't been here, there should have been no fish. The government authorities at times do be afraid to come to the fishers.
I know that somebody who is doing illegal business has the money to bribe and pay so that he sustains himself. If there is no fish, we cannot feed our children to go to school.