- Liberia revealed plans in May for a close season for fishing, but still hasn’t given any details of what it covers, whom it will apply to, or even when it will come into force.
- Policymakers say a pause in fishing activity is necessary to allow stocks to replenish, and is also an obligation for Liberia under a regional fisheries bloc whose other members have also planned or even implemented close seasons.
- Liberia’s small-scale fishers say the plan could be a solution to dwindling catches, but say there must be some form of livelihood support for them during the period when they can’t fish.
- They also say a close season must apply first and foremost to the industrial vessels that harvest a large amount of the country’s fish, including from nearshore waters that are supposed to be the exclusive domain of small-scale fishers.
ROBERTSPORT, Liberia — “We depend only on the sea for our survival. How will we manage when the sea is closed?” Mamie Freeman was seated atop a beached canoe in Robertsport, a bustling fishing community in western Liberia. She glanced occasionally at her fellow fishmongers, who were busy packing up the fish they’d just purchased. She was worried about a government plan to implement a close season for fishing.
No fishing for a portion of the year would mean no catch, no fish for her to sell, and no way to support her family. Mamie, whose fiancé is a fisher, had relocated to Robertsport due to low catch in the capital, Monrovia, where she used to live. She said she uses the proceeds from selling fish to provide for her eight children, including their medical, school, shelter and other needs. Any suspension of income, however temporary, could be devastating for the family’s thin finances.
Close (or closed) seasons legally prohibit fishing activities during specific times of the year, either for particular species or gear types, or across the board. They’re a standard fisheries management tool to reduce the effect of overfishing and allow fish stocks to replenish. But the news of plans to implement the measure in Liberia, which the government revealed in May, has caused consternation within the country’s small-scale fishing sector. Since then, the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority (NaFAA), Liberia’s fisheries regulator, has released no further details about the rollout of the plan, leaving the public with scant information, including when the closure would start, how long it would last, which fish stocks it would include, or, controversially, whether it would apply to both the industrial and small-scale fishing sectors.
In a statement to Mongabay, NaFAA communications director Lewis Konoe said implementing a close season would be important to Liberia to allow fish numbers to recover and prevent overexploitation, “thereby promoting sustainability”; help maintain ecological balance and ecosystem function; and benefit the local economy. Konoe did not respond to Mongabay’s specific questions about the government’s close season plans.
A regional plan
Liberia’s rollout of a close season is being spurred along by the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC), a regional fisheries organization with a membership of six West African countries: Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria. The FCWC was established in 2007 to facilitate cooperation in fisheries management and the sustainable development of fisheries among member countries.
In 2022, the FCWC launched an effort to encourage all member states to take steps to reduce regional overfishing, including implementing close seasons. A key first step would be to conduct marine stock assessments, a critical factor in informing management decisions as well as attracting investments to the sector.
Of the FCWC members, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Benin have all completed assessments of their fish stocks and rolled out close season measures. Togo conducted a stock assessment in May 2024, but has yet to implement a close season. Nigeria has yet to complete either.
Liberia began assessing its marine stocks in January 2024, and has completed a first phase. The findings have not been released because a second assessment is expected out soon. The analysis should give a picture of the abundance and distribution of different species within Liberia’s coastal space.
In May, NaFAA and FCWC authorities met to ensure Liberia complies with the FCWC agreement. At the time, NaFAA listed several steps it must take before it can implement any close season, including holding discussions with and raising awareness among stakeholders about the benefits of a close season; creating alternative livelihood support for fishers; and assessing the outcome of the fish stock assessment.
“The FCWC wants Liberia to enjoy the benefits of its fisheries resources for the food security and food nutrition of the greatest proportion of its population possible,” reads a statement from the FCWC provided to Mongabay by Kofi Taylor-Hayford, its communications officer. “A fishery close season is one of the most effective tool[s] in the toolkit of measures to ensure that these resources are sufficient in quantity and quality to do so.”
The statement said it was important for all six countries to implement close seasons because fishers will migrate to neighboring countries to continue their activities if they aren’t restricted regionally. “Consequently, Liberia also suffers losses when Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana close their fisheries, and fishers migrate to Liberia to fish,” the statement said.
A big problem for all six countries is ensuring compliance with close seasons and other management measures. The FCWC can’t offer much assistance as a regional fisheries advisory body with no enforcement mandate, the statement said, but it shares information from its vessel-monitoring activities “so that Member States can act at the national level to enforce compliance.”
Grappling with overfishing
Overfishing has been a huge challenge across West Africa, including in Liberia, where it has taken a toll on food security and the livelihoods of the more than 33,000 people in the small-scale fishing sector whose lives depend on the trade in fish. The full extent of overfishing in Liberia remains unknown, but the stock assessment results should shed some light once they’re released. Local fishers regularly complain of dwindling stocks and competition from foreign vessels.
Eric Pattern, a fisheries lecturer at the University of Liberia, said any decision to implement a close season measure must be backed by scientific analysis and consider the livelihoods of small-scale fishers and the goals of reducing poverty and improving food security.
Fishers and fishmongers Mongabay spoke with in Robertsport expressed deep concern about the low catches and widespread unsustainable fishing practices. But while they expressed confidence a close season could improve catches, they didn’t want one implemented until alternative livelihood support was in place.
James Logan, secretary-general of the Liberia Artisanal Fishermen Association, said any management measure, including a close season, must apply first and foremost to the industrial vessels that harvest a large amount of the country’s fish. “Our sea is being overfished because some trawlers fish within the 6 nautical miles [11-kilometer] inshore exclusion zone reserved for small-scale fishermen,” Logan said. “Our fishermen who supply the local market have to go up to 10 [nautical] miles [19 km] into other zone to get catch,” he said, referring to the offshore zone where trawlers and artisanal fishers alike can fish. Artisanal fishers are finding such offshore fishing trips increasingly necessary as inshore stocks decline, and also increasingly dangerous as their canoes are designed for calmer waters closer to shore.
“The impact of close season will be negative and positive,” said Nimely Doe, president of the Collaborative Management Association, a community-led fisheries management body in Robertsport. “As much as it will preserve the fish and help to increase fish supply, it will cost great effect on the well-being of fishermen, fish processors, fish transporters and others.”
The lack of infrastructure in Liberia contributes to the difficulty of implementing a close season. “For us [fishers], we do not think we can survive close season because we do not have a cold storage to keep our catch. And no other means of livelihood,” Thomas Kiazolu, owner of three semi-industrial boats based in Robertsport, told Mongabay.
In 2017, NaFAA, with support from the World Bank through its West Africa Regional Fisheries Program, built a fish landing facility at Robertsport with cold storage. At least two other such facilities are still in planning stages along the Liberian coast. The Robertsport facility was expected to store about 2 metric tons of fish per day and increase employment by 16% as result of recovered stocks, since less fishing would be required if less of the catch were wasted due to spoilage. But the facility is currently dormant, according to Kiazolu, Logan and others. NaFAA did not respond to Mongabay’s inquiries about its status.
Amid the daunting need for sustainability measures to safeguard fisheries resources lies the fear of losing income.
“Fish is not dying enough but we are still surviving,” said Kula Sherriff, chair of a fishmongers’ committee in Robertsport, referring to the recent low catches. “It’s better we keep surviving than to have something [the close season] in place which could cause us all dead from starvation.”
Banner image: Fishers in Robertsport in 2009. Image by kath37 via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
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