Production in Mauritanian waters is estimated at 900000 tonnes per year out of a potential total of 1,8 million tonnes. Fish resource in Mauritania may well be privatised with the new system creating secured individual quota to catch fish, which would exclude many local fishermen.

Ibrahima Sarre, a local fisherman from Mool cooperative which is employing 1000 sailors in Nouakchott : « we don’t want the quota system ; it means death for us local fishermen. Today, we already can’t find the necessary authorisations to build our pirogues (large canoes). Though there are people who hold the licences to build, and they are not even fishermen. We don’t want others to come and sell us their quotas for fish. I live from fishing. You see all these men and women make a living from fishing: where are they gonna go? » he said, pointing at a large group of sea workers at the fish market in Nouakchott.

The new fishing strategy, which has been adopted for the next five years, proposes a new method to allocate access to resource and based on secure quota. This means that one company or a person will be allocated a quantity of fish to catch over a as yet undefined but long period of time.

During the public debate over this strategy in December 2014, the fisheries minister has been criticised by the fishermen representatives; they say that this project will lead to the privatisation of the fish resource and it will deprive fishermen of their job.

In the last 25 years, Mauritania has adopted six successive strategies of fisheries and fish farming management. The new strategy, according to a group of former Fihseries ministers , ought to «give preference to national fishermen, strengthen basic infrastructures, help preserve resource and integrate the sector to the national economy »

According to Mr Mohamed Elvaghih, a fisherman, « this strategy is a pillar of the national economy. It has been prepared by national and foreign experts. Its impact on fishermen, and even more on the country, will be positive. At the beginning, we did not well understand the quota system, but things are much clearer now. »

Previously, the system planned for a maximum sustainable productivity, mapped fixed fishing zones and imposed biological pauses. This meant that the fishing effort on the available fish resource was under control. Until now, licenses were awarded for fishing vessels, with restrictions on their fishing gear, on the periods of fishing and the zone where they could not fish. But licenses did not grant anyone the property of a quota, ie a quantity of fish to catch. Hence, the fish remained the joint property of all citizens. It became private property once and only when caught and brought out of the water.

Mauritania with its 720 kms of shore line and an Exclusive Economic Zone of 230 square miles is known as one of the richest in fish resource in the world and is often considered as an eldorado for the fishing industry.