The West African nations of Mauritania and Senegal have signed a bridge fishing agreement as their respective governments continue working on securing a long-term deal.
Negotiations on the longer-term deal, seeking to replace the most recent agreement between the two countries that expired in July, have hit several snags, including sustainability concerns regarding Mauritanian marine fisheries and a new push by Senegal to increase permits allowable under the agreement.
“We will continue negotiations … relating to the improvement of the framework for carrying out the activities of artisanal fishermen, the increase in the number of licenses, and the adaptation of the system to the needs expressed by artisanal fishing communities,” Senegal Minister for Fisheries and Maritime Economy Fatou Diouf said.
An agreement, no matter how short, is especially important for Senegalese fishers, as many have been driven to fish in Mauritania, sometimes illegally, due to the depletion of Senegal’s overfished stocks on their side of the maritime border.
This situation has resulted in tensions boiling over multiple times in recent years, including one incident in which a Senegalese fisherman was killed by the Mauritanian Coast Guard in 2018, triggering violent protests in the Senegalese city of Saint Louis, which is near the Mauritania border.
Analysts have attributed the incident to the non-renewal of a fisheries protocol in 2016; the countries eventually reached an agreement in 2018, but only after violence erupted.
Even further back, in 1989, the two countries closed their common maritime and land borders, severed diplomatic ties, and engaged in sporadic violence in what analysts linked to ethnic clashes between the Senegalese farming community and Mauritanian herders.
The most recent fishing deal between the two countries allowed 500 fishing boats from Senegal to fish 50,000 metric tons (MT) of pelagic fish annually, excluding yellow mullet and wahoo, in Mauritanian waters in exchange for EUR 15 (USD 17.58) per MT of fish caught.
