Under this heading are included all the actions that are needed to ensure that the policy decisions on measures that should be taken to manage the resource are in fact followed through, and the fishermen do what is expected of them. It would be unrealistic to believe that the management measures that seem to be desirable will actually be applied within the CECAF area until there has been some considerable improvement in the various aspects of enforcement and surveillance. They may be grouped as follows: the legal framework, the active policing that has to be carried out by governments and the requirements for reporting and similar actions that should be placed on the fishermen themselves.
The first legal requirement is that each country should have a basic fishery law under which the government, and in particular the fisheries department or other agency with direct responsibility for fisheries, should be able to introduce appropriate measures, e.g. closed seasons, catch quotas, licence fees, etc. without the need to go through long legislative procedures. Although not enough is known to determine precisely what measures would be needed in different situations and the actual detailed requirements, e.g. the opening and closing dates of the season, or the value of the licence fee, will generally need to be varied from year to year, enough is known by drawing on experience of different parts of the world with analogous situations to determine the type of measures that are likely to be needed by CECAF countries. This means that it is possible now to determine fairly closely the desirable form of a basic fishery law. In fact, FAO and the CECAF Project in particular, have been active in assisting countries to revise their basic fishery legislation to deal with the new situation of extended jurisdiction and the more urgent need to manage the resources. This assistance could be extended to all the West African countries needing it.
The basic law should, in addition to covering all the likely forms of management, take cognizance of the various time-scales on which management decisions have to be taken. Broad policy matters at the strategic level will normally be taken annually. For example, the traditional procedure of the North Atlantic Commission in the 1960’s and early 1970’s was for an annual meeting in the middle of each year at which decisions were taken regarding mesh-sizes, catch quotas, etc., which normally took effect in the following year. Experience has shown that events in the sea change too quickly, and our information on these changes come too slowly, for this leisurely procedure to be entirely adequate. Modifications on some aspects, at least of the management measures, need to be taken quickly. This will usually require some delegation of authority to lower levels in the administration in close day-to-day touch with the fishery operations.
The actual policing of the regulations can be the most difficult and expensive aspect of fishery management. To some extent policing and inspection can be done at the fishing ports, e.g. as concerning number and registration of fishing vessels and, to some extent, the gear used and the catches. This type of inspection is relatively inexpensive. However, once at sea, a fisherman has a great deal of flexibility on how he fishes, where he fishes, for what species and with what gear; and much of these activities can only be checked by direct inspection at sea. For example, when a minimum mesh-size is specified, the value of this mesh-size in releasing small fish can be frustrated by placing, after leaving port, extra layers of netting over the cod-end. The need for some degree of sea going inspection, therefore, exists even in respect of fisheries of the coastal states. It is obviously even more necessary in respect of non-local fishing.
The work of policing covers: detection, i.e. the determination of what vessels are present on the fishing grounds; verification of their activities, i.e. checking whether they are using the correct type of gear or fishing for the allowed species and, only as the last resource, actual arrest or other legal action. These need not be carried out in the same way. For example, aircraft have proved very useful for detection and also to some extent in verification, especially using high quality photographs from a low level, which can give a lot of information on the species and sizes of fish caught, but arrests have to be carried out by surface vessels. Considerable experience on different techniques, and their relative costs has been built up in different parts of the; world, mostly outside the CECAF area. Studies of the results of these experiences, which could be made through the project, would be invaluable in helping the CECAF coastal states to choose the most effective methods of enforcing any desired measure and also, where appropriate, to modify proposed measures so as to make them more readily or more cheaply enforceable.
Besides active enforcement and policing by aircrafts or ships, a high degree of compliance with management measures can be obtained more passively by putting requirements on the fishermen. This can cover the requirements for registration of vessels and for each vessel to carry registration numbers and marks clearly visible to, for example, patrol aircraft and vessels and for non-local vessels to check at local points at the beginning and end of each fishing trip. These requirements should be widened to include the supply of statistical and similar data required for the assessment of the stocks. As fishing becomes more intense and more complex, resource evaluation requires more and more detailed data on exact location of catches, the main target species, and precise fishing effort that can be supplied only by the fishermen themselves, most conveniently in the form of logbooks. The advent of extended jurisdiction allows the use of logbooks or similar detailed records to be made a condition of access to resources. The nature of the data to be recorded, the forms of possible logbooks, and the general conditions to be followed are very similar in all parts of the world. Again, experience in some areas outside the CECAF region is greater than that in CECAF and it would be highly desirable for this experience to be made available, for example in the form of studies prepared under contract to the CECAF projects.
The final aspect of inspection and enforcement that should be stressed, is the need for each group of participants to be satisfied that the inspection is being effective in respect of each other group. This is particularly important when the same stock is being exploited by more than one country. This can touch on delicate questions of jurisdiction. The principle of international inspection has been accepted in several regions in respect of fisheries on the high seas. For example, under the ICNAF arrangements a duly authorized vessel of one country can stop and inspect fishing vessels of other states, though the authority to institute legal proceedings (if they appear to be necessary) remains with the flag state of the fishing vessel concerned. In the case of shared stocks, there seems to be the need of some comparable method whereby one coastal state can be assured that fishermen operating on the same stock but in the zones of another coastal state are in fact complying with any agreed management measures. This clearly will require some degree of formal international machinery, which might well be set up within the general structure of CECAF, and in particular of its committees for the management of resources within the limits of national jurisdiction.
