Fishing quota of 10,000 tonnes of sardines approved

Namibia's cabinet has decided to approve a fishing quota of 10,000 tonnes of sardines, despite there being a fishing ban on this species since 2018 due to overfishing in the past.


The Minister of Information and Communication Technology, Emma Theofelus, announced last Thursday afternoon that the catch quota is intended to serve as in line with the so called „governmental objectives“. The minister explained that the cabinet had also approved the quota being allocated to one or more companies with processing facilities that ‘use environmentally friendly fishing methods’ and that the fish must also be processed locally.


Fishing moratorium stays intact - The minister also announced that the cabinet had decided to extend the moratorium on sardine fishing for at least another three years. ‘It will remain in force until the population of this fish species reaches one million tonnes. This is to allow for the possibility of increasing sustainable spawning biomass,’ said Theofelus.


Sardines are small fish that feed on plankton and are an important source of food for a variety of other fish, seabirds, marine mammals and humans alike. They are considered a ‘high-quality’ fish in terms of their energy content per gram. Sardines thus represent the largest part of the energy transfer between plankton and larger fish, seabirds and marine mammals. According to the Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE), the collapse of sardine stocks has also had a devastating impact on local populations of penguins, gannets and cormorants. The population of gannets and penguins has roughly declined by ninety per cent and that of cormorants by close to sixty percent. ‘As a signatory to the Benguela Current Convention (BCC) with Angola and South Africa, Namibia is responsible for preserving its share of this ecologically and economically important marine ecosystem,’ commented the Environmental Chamber in 2021, when Namibia was considering lifting the moratorium on fishing sardines.