The fisheries sub-sector of the ministry in charge of plant and animal production includes three areas of activity of great importance: sea fishing, inland fishing and aquaculture. All three areas of activity contribute substantially to the agricultural gross domestic product. Despite its strengths, artisanal fishing is confronted with the use of inappropriate gear.
Artisanal fishing contributes 2.2% of national GDP and 8.5% of agricultural GDP. For the year 2022, “national fishing and aquaculture production stands at 74,622T. But, the production of artisanal fishing alone is 71,981T”, inform the executives of the Ministry in charge of agriculture and fishing. “In terms of value, activities related to the marketing of fishery products amount to more than 107 billion francs in 2022”, specifies Cyrille Aholoukpè, Head of the monitoring and evaluation department of the Fisheries Department. He recalls that in Benin fishing is essentially artisanal. This notion covers the types of fishing that involve few sophisticated means, unlike large ships, boats that engage in industrial fishing. Artisanal fishing is therefore the set of “activities that consist in catching fish with rudimentary methods and equipment. It is practiced with motorized or non-motorized canoes and nets,” reports Herman Gangbazo, head of the fisheries development and management department. Benin has a long coastline of about 121 km which extends from the Nigerian border to the Togolese border. In its exclusive economic zone of nearly 27,750 km², the continental shelf, where rare and weak upwellings occur, has a sandy bottom and covers an area of approximately 2,800 km², but reaches 3,100 km² at depths of 200 m. The development of marine fisheries in Benin faces multiple problems and fishing is carried out under somewhat confused conditions. This situation results in an anarchic evolution of production due to a lack of rigorous or even ineffective monitoring of fishing; a lack of knowledge of fishing grounds and poor socio-professional organization in the field. The shortcomings that characterize Beninese maritime fishing are linked not only to the poor management of resources but also to their scientific knowledge, which is still fragmentary. In 2007, small-scale maritime fishing was practiced from 80 fishing camps scattered in the four coastal departments of Benin. There are 4,345 artisanal fishermen operating at sea, including 2,234 Beninese (51.4%), and foreigners of Ghanaian, Togolese and Nigerian nationality. Commonly used gears are gillnets, purse seine, beach seine, handline. The small-scale maritime fishing canoe fleet comprises 816 operational canoes, of which about 46% are motorized, according to the results of the 1999 socio-economic survey.
Artisanal lagoon fishing
Lagoon fishing in Benin is considered a form of inland fishing. Inland fishing produces a large quantity of fish annually. The large number of streams, reservoirs, reservoirs, rivers, streams, etc. form the basis of a fishery whose production is estimated at more than 30,000 tonnes per year. Inland fishing is little known. A partial census was carried out in 2006 to cover the three districts in the south of the country. Inland fishing is a very important activity for local communities because of its job-generating nature and above all a source of protein for the entire population. It employs about 57,500 fishermen and a hundred women who compete with men on Lake Ahémé and the coastal lagoon by fishing for crabs and oysters. About 40,000 women are involved in the fishing industry. In addition, inland fishing supports upstream and downstream more than 300,000 people represented by sellers of fishing equipment, canoe manufacturers, fish processors and sellers, fish scalers, etc.
Industrial fishing and marine resources
Industrial maritime fishing is, for its part, underdeveloped. The fishing effort hardly exceeds 40 trips on average for the last ten (10) years and the annual landing is around 600 tons of fish, representing only 8% of the total sea fishing. The gear used is the bottom trawl. A dozen stern trawlers exploit the maritime areas under Beninese jurisdiction.
Tuna fishing
There is no tuna fishery in Benin, although foreign vessels may catch tuna off Benin. In this case it is undeclared captures. Available information indicates that the waters under Beninese jurisdiction are relatively poor in fishery resources. The exploitable potential of fish would be 12,000 tonnes per year and that of shrimp around 400 tonnes per year. Although Benin has many aquatic ecosystems with significant potential, the fishery sub-sector remains globally deficient in terms of production to the point that imports of fishery products are becoming more important day by day. In the region of the mouths of the rivers, there are shrimps which are fished mainly by foreign boats. Lobsters have been observed in the catches of trawlers (fishmongers), but not in large quantities. Octopuses are rare in catches; other species are not targeted. When cephalopods are landed, they are bycatch.
Inappropriate gear and water poisoning
Artisanal fishing in Benin is confronted with empirical practices that still do not favor the growth of fish populations. Thus, the proliferation of prohibited fishing techniques and methods, particularly at the level of artisanal maritime fishing, constitutes a bottleneck in the sub-sector. This is what led the government to decide in 2019 in the Council of Ministers on the subject. Since then, operations to clean up Benin’s bodies of water and streams have been carried out to protect the environment. This has resulted in particular in the establishment of a brigade to monitor water bodies and rivers in order to contain the inclinations of users of prohibited vehicles. The practices that result from the use of inappropriate gear have the effect of “emptying the bodies of water of all fish products, including larvae”, informs Cyrille Aholoukpè, Head of the Department of Fisheries’ monitoring and evaluation department. This hinders the regenerative power of ecosystems. At the level of inland fishing, fishermen engage in the deforestation of banks and watersheds. However, this vegetation protects the bed of water bodies against filling up and spillage of products. In short, it acts as a filter. The absence of these filters leaves the field free for bad weather to carry a lot of alluvium and a lot of sand which will fill the bed. In doing so, the consequences of these practices reduce the depth of ecosystems. But, there are other problems. Indeed, according to the head of the monitoring and evaluation department, there is also the use of pesticides in agriculture. It justifies how the use of these chemicals in agriculture has negative effects on human health. “Pesticides used in watersheds are drained into water bodies and, at a certain dose, you start noticing what is called bioaccumulation at the fish level. By consuming these fish, it starts by making the man sick”. The same applies to the marketing of petroleum products by traffickers and the dumping of dyes on the banks by users. These practices pollute and poison the waters. This leads the Fisheries Department to engage in a merciless fight against these practices with the help of university laboratories.
Public health issues
Artisanal fishing represents more than 75% of national fish production. With regard to water poisoning through the use of pesticides and dyes, the Fisheries Department is working on a change of habit to reduce and completely curb the resulting health problems. And for good reason ! “What enters the bodies of water comes back to us through the consumption of fish products. When you eat fish that has bio-accumulated chemicals, it will disrupt your hormonal system. And you may develop abnormal phenomena. A man can grow breasts exaggeratedly, a woman will grow beards”. However, argues the technician, these characters are characters of sexual dimorphism in humans. Breasts are characteristics of women and beards are characteristics of men. More seriously, sterility in couples is sometimes due to the phenomenon of ovotestis where the gonads are lifeless, because destroyed by chemical substances dumped into bodies of water and transmitted to humans through the consumption of aquatic organisms: fish, oysters, prawns… It is also likely that this is one of the causes of cases of massive fish mortality in the lakes.
No fishing in the channels
It is not allowed to fish everywhere in the bodies of water. Between the sea and Lake Nokoué, there is a channel 4km long and 300m wide which connects the sea to continental water bodies. It is a migration corridor for migratory species that pass through it to satisfy their physiological needs. Either to go to reproduce, or to go to feed. The regulations protect the fishery resources when they are in these channels. But the fishermen, noticing that there are a lot of fish in this area, pass by. Some have made this area their fishing ground with the risk of extinguishing the fishery resources in the future. Fishing is prohibited in breeding areas. The use of reduced-mesh gear such as mosquito nets is prohibited. The protection policy initiated by the State for the benefit of these areas has yielded convincing results. “The inland fishing statistics in 2002 have increased compared to 2021. By way of illustration, 36,000 tonnes in 2021 against more than 38,000 tonnes in 2022, i.e. a gain of more than 2,000 tonnes which is due to the merit of the brigade’s operations”. The government is also promoting tools for restocking water bodies. This policy aims to protect biological reserves that are prohibited from fishing.
Jean-Claude KOUAGOU
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