Spotlight on transparency of fisheries in Seychelles |01 October 2020

Over 50 delegates involved in the fisheries sector yesterday gathered at the Eden Bleu Hotel to attend the kick-off forum ‘Transparency of Fisheries in Seychelles’.

The forum was to raise awareness of the importance of transparency for fisheries in Seychelles and to stimulate debates on how fisheries information is provided to the public.

Organised by the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) in collaboration with the department of blue economy, the event also informed local partners on the work being done to produce Seychelles’ first FiTI report.

Seychelles is the only country aside from Mauritania to be granted the status of a FiTI candidate country and therefore needs to conduct an assessment to submit its first report of publicly available information on its fisheries sector.

Seychelles is also the host country of the FiTI international headquarters which moved to our islands from Germany late last year.

The report will be launched at the second full-day workshop – planned for the end of the year – where results will be presented and discussed. Recommendations and conduction capacity building on core topics will also be carried out.

It is being compiled by local consultant, Dr Jude Bijoux.

The outcomes of this assessment will not only provide a robust status of the availability, accessibility and credibility of basic information but it will also be an ideal tool in institutionalising and improving the dialogue and cooperation between stakeholders.

There are a total of twelve requirements that Seychelles needs to comply with FiTI Standard, an internationally recognised guideline on what information on fisheries should be published online by public authorities.

These requirements cover the public registry of national laws, regulations and policies, fisheries agreements, the state of the fisheries resources, large-scale fisheries, small scale fisheries, law enforcement, post-harvest sector, fish trade, and others.

Sven Biermann, executive director of the international secretariat of FiTI, said that countries do not need to have complete data for every transparency requirement from the onset.

However the relevant public authorities must disclose the information they have and where gaps exist, demonstrate improvements over time.

“Without transparency in any sector, not only in fisheries, you cannot understand if the government that is entrusted to manage a particular sector is doing a good job so the general public must have a wider understanding of how the fisheries sector is managed because it impacts all the people living in Seychelles, not just from a trade and economic point of view but jobs, livelihoods, culture and so on.”

“We need to increase the awareness because I think that is one of the key aspects that is a challenge here. The sense of urgency is not here yet because there is still fish on the plate, people still go out fishing yet we have seen from our colleagues from the FAO that fish stocks are declining,” he said.

He added that markets, particularly Western markets, are now demanding to know of the start to finish processes before importing fish product.

“We have seen this in markets and players such as supermarkets that are demanding to learn more about how the sector is managed because if you constantly overfish and take too much fish out of the ocean there will be no future to work with.

“The FiTI report will assess the country against a number of requirements and show what information is available, what information is missing for the general public and media to understand and ask better questions about the sector.”

On his part, Philip Michaud, special advisor to the Vice-President of Seychelles and FiTI national lead, said that the greatest challenge at the moment is that many of the information of fisheries that are presently available uses technical jargon, making it difficult for persons unaffiliated with the industry to understand.

“This information seeks to benefit the economy and our management of fish stock and development[…]once the report is concluded and presented by the end of this year, we will meet with stakeholders to find out what they think about, if these information suffice since certain domains need more information than others,” said Mr Michaud.

The FiTI report will be presented during a launch forum at the end of 2020.

By Elsie Pointe