Worrying About Whales Instead of Managing Fisheries: A Personal Account of a Meeting in Senegal
by Daniel Pauly
On May 8 and 9 2008, I had the opportunity to attend, in Dakar, Senegal, a workshop organized by WWF and the Lenfest Ocean Program (LOP), devoted to the interaction between the great whale and fisheries of northwest Africa, and titled Whales & Fish Interactions: Are Great Whale a Threat to Fisheries? The workshop was attended by officials from the fishery ministries of half a dozen countries in the region, from Mauritania to Guinea, WWF and LOP staff, a few scientists, and, most interestingly, by parliamentarians from the host country.
The great whales in that region of the world come to reproduce and there are no live observations or stomach content indicating that they actively feed (even from several decade ago, when there was some occasional whaling off Northwest Africa). This is in line with what is known on great whales elsewhere in the tropics. Baleen whales, when the feed, rely mostly on krill and other small plankton organisms, and thus they would not, in any case, interact with the demersal and tuna fisheries prevailing off northwest Africa. So why a workshop on this outlandish topic? Why not Fisheries vs. the Martians?
The reason for the workshop was not only the fact that the countries in the Northwest African region increasingly vote with Japan at meetings of the International Whaling Commission. Rather, it is the fact that their delegates justify such votes on the grounds that their fisheries are negatively impacted by baleen whales. Indeed, they argue that the whole ecosystem is “out of balance”, a balance that can be reestablished only by killing whales - which flies in the face of everything known about the fisheries of the region, whale biology, and common sense. And it does get better when it is tailored for local consumption.
This was a very awkward situation for me to be in. I have worked for years on West African fisheries, with the colleagues from the region, and supported their countries’ interest vis-à-vis people justifying the activity of EU-based or other distant-water fleets operating in West Africa on the basis of questionable ‘agreements’, which the coastal countries were blackmailed into signing, and through which their fisheries resources a made available at less than bargain prices (see Kaczynski and Fluharty 2001). These distant water fleets, jointly with the local, totally unmanaged and overgrown ‘small-scale’ fisheries have reduced the fisheries resources off West Africa to shadows of their former selves, which makes the management of these fisheries, and especially a reduction of their aggregate effort, a priority. This, in fact, was the main result of the EU-funded international research project called ‘Système d’Information et d’Analyse des Pêches de l’Afrique du Nord-Ouest’ (SIAP). This project provided to West African scientists and others to collaborate on the analysis of over half a century worth of catch time series and other data, with the results presented at an international conference held in Dakar in 2002 (see Chavance et al. 2004), amidst a furry of articles in the local press.
This was not the first time, obviously, that such findings were reported. In fact, the SIAP project was largely based on gathering and analyzing the vast literature, spanning several decades, which tracked the declining trajectory of the fisheries off West Africa. This literature, and the syntheses which resulted from the SIAP project, are available to inform local policy makers interested in reforming fisheries policies.
The most crucial reform would be moving from a situation where West African waters are seen as larder from which an endless supply of fish can be extracted to supply foreign markets (Alder and Sumaila 2004) to one where West African countries could build on export and processing of fish to strengthen their own economy, and benefit their own people.
The government positions that I heard at this meeting suggest, however, that such reforms are not being contemplated. Instead, the top fisheries officials of West African countries appear to have thrown their lot with their Japanese advisers, and their whale-eat-our-fish mantra, for reasons that are either obscure, or too obvious to mention.
The excellent scientific presentations at the workshop, by Drs Kristin Kaschner and Lyne Morrisette, dealt with the identity of the great whales off West Africa, their behavior, their incorporation in (Ecopath) trophic models, and the result of some preliminary simulations (with Ecosim), which suggested that killing all the whales off West Africa – even if it could be done - would have little effect on the fishery resources and catches.
At every step, their finding and assumptions were questioned by one or the other government officials, using concepts (such as ‘ecosystem balance’) and arguments (‘you have not studied the stomachs of newborn calves off West Africa, so you don’t really know that they don’t eat our fish’) originating in the Tokyo-based Cetacean Research Institute. The only evidence they presented was evidence of bad faith, the whole line of arguments being based on absent data. These purely negative arguments, indeed, are of the same kind as those that advocates of the so-called ‘intelligent design’ use to criticize evolution by natural selection, but who (for good reasons) never offer a positive argument for the case they attempt to make.
There was a ray of hope, though. The participating Senegalese parliamentarians, both from the Senate and the Lower House, were united in their questioning of their government’s position, and mentioning their surprise at a government policy that has never been publicly debated and which is actually alien to the culture of their constituents. Indeed, this very point was emphasized by a parliamentarian and mayor of a fishing town, who mentioned that her constituents, far from considering them to be their competitors, consider whales their guardians, and want to see them protected. This view was echoed by participants from other West African countries.
Still, I left Dakar with a heavy heart. To see that such a great country as Japan has twisted its entire development aid, and corrupted fisheries officials of an entire region for the sake of its tiny, heavily subsidized whaling industry, is sad. It will probably last years before the countries targeted by these delusional policies will see through these maneuvers, and free themselves from the officials which mislead them. Also, the real potential of whale eco-tourism is not being explored, although it has become a serious source of foreign currency in various other countries, e.g., in Argentina.
Foremost, however, the countries successfully targeted by the whale-eat-our fish delusion fail to concentrate on the real problem they have. This was brutally recalled by the senior parliamentarian at the workshop, who put the issue of the mismanagement of fisheries in the general context of food production in Senegal. He recalled that only a few years ago, his country allowed its own rice production to be destroyed by cheap imports from Taiwan, only to be hit a few years later with massive price increases, which have put the now imported staple out of the reach of most of his compatriots. And he warned that the whale-eat-our-fish issue could have similar effect, by diverting attention from the task of putting Senegalese fisheries on a sustainable basis.
Alder, J. and Sumaila, U.R. (2004) Western Africa: a fish basket of Europe past and present. Journal of Environment and Development 13(2):156-178.
Chavance, P., M. Ba, D. Gascuel, M. Vakily and D. Pauly (Editors). 2004. Pêcheries maritimes, écosystèmes et sociétés en Afrique de l’Ouest : un demi-siècle de changement. Actes du symposium international, Dakar - Sénégal, 24-28 juin 2002. Office des Publications Officielles des Communautés Européennes, XXXVI, collection des rapports de recherche halieutique ACP-UE 15, 532 p. + Appendices.
Kaczynski, V. M., and Fluharty, D. L. 2002. European policies in West Africa: who benefits from fisheries agreements? Marine Policy. 26: 75-93.