Namibia inherited a severely depleted fishery. The
previous regime left the fishing industry uncontrolled,
with excessive exploitation practices and no sustainable
fishing practices in place. This opened the waters to
long-distance fleets which openly exploited the fish
stock found outside the territorial waters and put severe
pressured on the resource.
The former administration had jurisdiction over
12 nautical miles out from the shore, while the
remainder was managed by the International
Commission for South East Atlantic Fisheries. This
organization which was established mainly as a tool to
ensure sustainable fishing in the South East Atlantic
was abused by member states whose main aim was to
harvest to the maximum the rich resources found in
the said waters.
With the attainment of independence and the
change in the governing regime, a new fisheries
management regime started with the enactment by
parliament of the Territorial Sea and Exclusive
Economic Zone Act (Act 3 of 1990). It stipulates that
the ‘sea outside the territorial sea of Namibia, but
within a distance of 200 nautical miles from the low
water line or any other base line from which the
territorial sea was measured, shall constitute the
exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Namibia’.
This proved to be a mammoth task at first as
Namibia had no adequate means to enforce the fisheries
laws within the EEZ. For the first year illegal fishing
by uncontrolled foreign vessels continued. This
prompted the government to implement a fisheries
management system and parliament enacted the Sea
Fisheries Act (Act 29 of 1992) to ensure that Namibia’s
living marine resources were utilized on a sustainable
basis, as required by Article 95(l) of the Constitution
of Namibia.
Namibia has one of the most productive fishing
grounds in the world and its marine ecosystem is
dominated by the Benguela current. The fishery
supports vast populations of commercially exploitable
fish species, some of which are shared with Angola and
South Africa. The inshore marine environment
provides valuable migration and nursery habitats for
many marine organisms. These organisms, in turn,
support rich populations of fish, which constitutes the
very foundation of marine fisheries in Namibia. As is
the case in other upwelling systems, relatively few
species dominate and their abundance is very much
dependent on changing environmental and climatic
conditions.