February 2020 — Per Erik Bergh (CEO) and Mathew Markides (Legal and Research Officer) represented Stop Illegal Fishing at the West Africa Task Force workshop on the management of risk in fisheries. Stop Illegal Fishing was able to provide expertise on the use of risk assessment in identifying non-compliant and high-risk vessels.
Per Erik Bergh commented, “Risk assessment is being widely adopted as a key component of the due diligence checks on fishing vessels, operators and catch for decision making on licensing, flagging or port access. Through the Port State Measures to Stop Illegal Fishing (PSM-SIF) project we have been road-testing a risk assessment tool to identify high-risk vessels. We hope this will prove to be a useful device for the West Africa Task Force.”
The workshop was hosted by the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) with technical support from the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) and the West Africa Task Force (WATF) technical team – Trygg Mat Tracking and Stop Illegal Fishing. The meeting took place in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on 17-19 February 2020.
This workshop was supported by the Norad-funded ‘Fisheries Intelligence and MCS Support’ project and the European Union-funded ‘Improved Regional Fisheries Governance’ project, both supporting the WATF as the FCWC mechanism to combat illegal fishing in the region.
