MMO shares expertise at the World Fisheries Congress
Representatives from the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) have been sharing their knowledge at the World Fisheries Congress.
Alistair McDonnell, Head of the MMO’s Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Team and Dr Melanie Austen, the MMO’s Chief Scientific Advisor, are two of the panel members at the event, taking place in Edinburgh from 7 to 11 May 2012.
Alistair’s session, on the impacts of and solutions to illegal fishing, also included discussion on work to combat IUU fishing in West Africa. Following the event Alistair’s fellow speakers, Victor Kargbo, a fisheries officer from Sierra Leone, and representatives from the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) visited the MMO to learn more about its fisheries management work.
Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) is a major global fisheries problem. It compromises fisheries management, deprives legitimate fishermen of sustainable harvests, and disproportionately impacts on developing countries’ economies and food supplies.
The MMO’s IUU Team works with agencies such as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), port health authorities, local authority enforcement officers and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to prevent IUU imports to the UK. Read more about the MMO’s work on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
IUU activities severely impact on Sierra Leone’s coastal communities, who are dependent on fish for an estimated 80 per cent of the animal protein they consume. In Sierra Leone, EJF operates a community surveillance patrol vessel to document evidence of illegal trawler activity within the Inshore Exclusion Zone (IEZ) reserved for small-scale, mainly local, fishing. Read more about EJF’s work in Sierra Leone.