Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture of Seychelles Pamela Charlette has said coastal states like Seychelles and Maldives need to work together to prevent overfishing and conduct surveillance of the waters in order to sustain marine resources.
Maldives and other members of Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) are continuously working to control overfishing, which could cause depletion of fish stocks and also cause socio-economic loses to coastal nations. To tackle the issues, IOTC holds meetings and deliberations throughout the year to figure pragmatic solutions for the problem.
One such meeting was held in August in the Maldives. The meeting focused on fast-tracking implementation of the proposal by Maldives to IOTC in May this year, to set allocations on fisheries conducted in waters of different nations.
Speaking about these efforts, Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture of Seychelles, Pamela Charlette said that members of IOTC and coastal states have the same basic principles, which is to ensure coastal states have the full right to obtain socio-economic benefits of the marine resources of our oceans. She said this can only be ensured by setting stringent policies for all to follow.
The Seychelles Minister noted that there is overfishing happening at the moment, so they want to curb it, and the IOTC resolution or declaration that was proposed by Maldives, is a way forward to benefit from fisheries resources. The proposal by Maldives at IOTC aims to ensure coastal states have full authority over the waters, thus ensuring benefits from the resources.
Meanwhile, Minister Pamela Charlette also urged Maldives and other coastal countries to support the bid by Seychelles to submit a proposal to IOTC to factor in socio-economic impacts of fisheries related activities. She said the proposal by Seychelles is pertinent to economies of coastal nations, the people and individual communities as fisheries is socially and economically.