“Our people have been turned into illegal fishers because there was no system that guided them. … We want to get them to understand the value of the fish that they are going to harvest. We must be able to get markets for them. We must build infrastructure for storage.”
Morgan Johnson, a local fisherman and the chairperson of the Port Nolloth cooperative, said 75 households will benefit from the fishing rights.
Johnson said the launch marked an end of a fishing rights application journey that for 11 years.
He said the cooperative was made up of local fishermen, including women and young people.
The board of the cooperative is made up of seven members – five men and two women.
As part of the fishing rights, they will be sending boats into the waters to catch line-fish species like snoek and cape bream, horders, mussels and kelp.
“There are 75 households out of Port Nolloth that will benefit from the small-scale fishing rights policy. Hondeklipbaai, is a smaller town than us and about 28 households will benefit from the fishing permit,” Johnson said.
He said the cooperative currently has nine fishing boats and 15 to 20 small lobster vessels. A quarter of the fishermen are young people.
-This article was originally published in the GCIS Vuk'uzenzele.