Spearfishing – another blood sport which needs stopping

SPEAR FISHING – ANOTHER BLACK MARK ON TANZANIA’S REPUTATION

(Posted 21st December 2014)

‘There is nothing ethical about spear fishing, like there is nothing ethical about hunting’ told me a conservation source during a recent visit to Dar es Salaam, when following up on a growing number of complaints about this form of ‘under water blood sport’ as it has been phrased in the past in apparent reference to an advert on a Facebook page.

Conservationists, already alarmed about the sharp rise of killing reef fish with explosives, which was recently exposed here, are now taking aim at this sort of marine activity, which they claim is illegal and banned in most parts of the world.

‘You know our position about hunting in Tanzania and we know yours. The way poaching has decimated our elephants, it is highly irresponsible to permit hunting and give permits for shooting elephant. The hunting companies always claim they are a guarantor against poaching but they have failed just as badly as our government. How hunting can still be allowed in the Selous is a question the minister should answer. There we lost over 50.000 elephant over the past couple of years and I am quoting figures from the 2007 and 2013 game census. Hunting no longer has a place in today’s conservation situation, when every animal counts. We will in 2015 mobilize a lot more against hunting block allocations and expose, like name and shame, those who hold hunting concessions and where we get it the names of their clients also. The Loliondo disaster where people were almost displaced to give the UAE royals another hunting ground is just another case. Our country makes all the wrong moves and that has to stop. As fas as our marine resources go we will take that up also next year. Your article about the dynamite fishing has really rattled people here and the spear fishing is next in line for naming and shaming’ added another regular conservation commentator.

Another contribution then followed soon afterwards, when the focus of the investigation underway became more widely known, with the mail saying: ‘There is a company with big time spear fishing based in Zanzibar, another political story; apparently the conservation people in Zanzibar are totally against and there is a controversy about spear fishing. The laws says no but according to the conservationists, the guys who are helping these people is someone from the ruling party CCM and is one of the members of the Zanzibar Tourism Commission. He is directly involved and it seems no one can stop the spear fishing. The guys were doing it in Kenya and were asked to stop and they found their hiding place in Zanzibar.

They are spear fishing in Latham which is under dispute as to who owns the territory between the mainland and Zanzibar. These guys massacre dog tooth tunas which is a reef tuna and the reef fishing is banned all over the world I understand. GT Trevellys and Giant Trevellys, Wahoos and other restricted species.

Combined with the planned assault on the Coelacanth Marine National Park near Tanga where the Tanzanian government is planning to build a port and the spread of using explosives to kill and stun fish, is spearfishing according to all the sources spoken to the biggest threat to promoting diving along the reefs off the Tanzanian mainland and around some of the islands. When asked how deep sea fishing compared to spearfishing was the following unison answer forthcoming: ‘For sailfish we actively promote a tag and release policy and almost all our clients adhere to it. When such a precious fish is landed, it is measured, checked for existing tags – we record such information and share it globally – and then a new tag put on the fish before releasing it. That is ethical and we do not need to use that word to promote what we do, we are ethical unlike those who need such exaggerations to mask what they are up to’.

Comments found on the Facebook page of the spear fishers like ‘Miami boys hitting the fish hard at St. Lazarus Bank, Mozambique’ in fact exposes the mindset of killing for pleasure not unlike what hunting websites publish about their clientele’s hunger for blood sport.

It is good to note though that the days of spearfishing under a cloud of obscurity are coming to an apparent end as the conservation fraternity in Tanzania is now taking issue with them, as they have taken issue about the destruction of the reefs through the uncontrolled use of explosives.

Said an Arusha based conservationist in closing: ‘It is time to take issue with such unsustainable and undesirable practices. We are going into an election year and if we can make this an issue we will. For sure we will mobilise the global conservation scene. I wonder how these guys will like it when opposition is expressed and featured on a regular basis and they are openly exposed. They should change their evil ways and promote diving and filming fish, not killing it for some weird pleasure’.

Spoken like the true conservationists all these sources have been for years, standing up for wildlife and now, finally, also for marine life. Watch this space.

While anticipated and in fact forewarned by the various sources spoken to about this issue in Dar es Salaam recently, was the vile nature and in part the outright threats contained in nearly two dozen attempts to post on the blog site, indicative of a coordinated mobbing attack.

Eric Allard, a Director of Extreme Blue Water Spearfishing, in a response more extensive than the article itself, tried to remain factual and in fact invited my sources to sit down with him and discuss spearfishing. 

The letter would have been published here, were it not for the fact that on closer inspection of the ISP addresses captured by my blog site the similarities and number sequences were striking, clearly indicating that this was a well-coordinated attack by individuals with some link to each other, which went in most part way beyond civility, and by doing so exposed the mindset of those who felt they needed to offload their gutter minds on me in their attempt to bully and silence a critic of what they do.

My legal team, which had cleared the initial article, as it did in the past with articles about another blood sport, hunting, and several stinging articles on Tanzania’s general performance in the conservation arena, has taken the responses containing threats on file in case any further action needs to be taken. That said, I have been threatened before and expect to be threatened some more in the future, or else I would probably not do my job right.

The net result of the campaign is that even the more level headed individuals who responded will not get a platform here to express their views, something they can thank their vile ‘friends’, colleagues and associates for, who were trying to do the dirty work for them.

It has also resulted in all of my sources declining dialogue on the account of concerns for their own personal safety, incidentally precisely the reason why none of them wanted to be named as a source to avoid being targeted too with threats and intimidation.