State trains 300 fisherfolk on deep sea fishing

At least 300 fishermen have been trained in deep sea fishing by the national government.

Fisheries deputy Principal Secretary Kassim Farah said the government targets to train at least 1,000 fishermen every year for five years.

He said the training, which is sponsored by the national government, targets everyone, but people who will benefit the most are local communities from the coastal region.

“Some of the people who have been trained have already been hired with the international vessels," he said. 

We rolled out the programme of training these people because we realised people living along the ocean have a tendency of doing fishing on the ocean lines,” he said.

Speaking during the World Ocean Day on Wednesday, Farah said the government has also come up with Fisheries Development and Management Act, which targets to protect the ocean.

“It is our responsibility to take care of the ocean and create awareness on its importance because it keeps many lives; what scientist call biodiversity," Farah said. 

"It has been discovered by scientists that about 200,000 lives in the ocean, the research is still going to know about the lives in the ocean.”

Farah added that in order to protect the lives and get the best out of the ocean, awareness for clean ocean, environment and sustainable use of the ocean must be created.

The government is also protecting the ocean by creating the Act which is being enforced by Kenya Coast Guard.

KCG is an inter-agency that enforces the law to ensure there is no illegal fishing, use of illegal gears and unlicensed and unrelated fishing.

“The Fisheries department has in the past put in place the Fisheries Development and Management Act that govern how fishing is done in the ocean and the lakes because our work in the policy entails how we can protect and invest in the waters and lake,” he said.

Farah further said the department is developing the Marine Fisheries Access Right Regulation, which is based on the Act and the aquaculture regulations in fish farming out of natural waters.

He called upon residents to stop dumping litter in the ocean and use the right equipment, which does not catch young breeds when fishing.

The Fisheries department director Rodrick Kundu said the government is also doing capacity building for the coastal communities to improve their fishing and help them transition from semi-scale to semi-commercial and gradually to commercial basis.

“Currently the production of fish from the ocean is 25,000 metric per year against a potential of 150,000 to 300,000 metric per year. For us to utilise that potential, we need reforms which are still going on and the policy," Kundu said. 

He said the government is also investing in infrastructure to support the fishing services so that the fish that is harvested within the waters, at least 30 per cent, is landed in the country.

“We are also supporting research so that new information is generated to support policy and management decisions because the ocean is dynamic with many things happening," he said. 

"Therefore every year we need new information so that we can plan on how to tap on the potential from the ocean.” 

He said there is need to have the regional linkages because some of the fish the country gets is transboundary, meaning they migrate from south to the north.

“For the purposes of good management, we need to work together so that we put in strategies that will be able to protect the migratory fish species that are passing through our water,” the director said. 

“We need to maximise the exploitation without interfering with the stocks and that is why it was said we need to put in place measures that only harvest the required amount of fish and protect the juvenile.

“We now have a patrol vessel PV Doriah that is being used for protection of marine waters. We want to keep away people using the wrong methods of fishing so the they do not deplete our fishery resources.”

(edited by Amol Awuor)