The difficulties that Somali fishermen face.

After the collapse of the central government, the country was in a state of crisis, and most of its infrastructure was destroyed. Fishermen were facing serious challenges. In general, the Somali population has historically not been a big fan of eating fish so the number of fishermen was small as the number of people who consumed it were small. The devastation has resulted in many problems for small fishermen that have affected both the economy and livelihoods of fishermen and some of these are;

The problem of foreign vessels engaging in illegal fishing in our seas, as our seas are overflowing with many species of fish and seeing foreign vessels as vulnerable (no one to protect them) they began to fish even closer to the coasts and these vessels always roll the nets that the small fishers lay in the sea to trap the fish and catch, then the fishermen miss the nets as well as the fish. These vessels dump wastes into the sea, causing a lot of problems to the Marine Environment and Marine Life. They destroy the ecosystem and as a result fishermen lose fish.

Suffering for fishermen, especially divers, they sometimes face fainting, paralysis, or death at sea when they go to the sea for fishing and they do not know the cause of these problems and. Recently, Somali fishermen have appeared in the media suffering from unknown causes, some of which have resulted in death and disability.

Somali fishermen face communication problems and sometimes the reason for the fishermen disappearing is that fishermen have always gone fishing to catch fish after the direction of fishing, they do not know where the land is because they do not have sophisticated communication equipment.

Somali fishermen do not receive much support from the government which boosts their productivity and they are often self-sufficient.

By Hassan Abdullahi Mao