TWO crew members were said to have been killed and 40 others injured as pirates raided 16 vessels off Calabar Bonny River. The vessels belonged to four different companies.
During the raid, seafood, electronic equipment and other devices on board were carted away by the pirates.
To prevent the travellers from communicating, the armed pirates also destroyed communication gadgets on board and made away with personal belongings of the crew.
In a statement released to The Guardian yesterday, the Executive Secretary, Nigerian Trawler Owners Association, Dr. Michael Bissong, called on the Federal Government to come to the immediate rescue of the fishing industry and save it from further loss of lives and property.
“Two weeks ago, several attacks were made on fishing trawlers by pirates, which resulted in the death of some crew members at that time. A similar number of fishing vessels were attacked over a period of two weeks but this time all the attacks took place within a span of 24 hours,” he said.
The pirates were very daring as instead of directly boarding the trawlers from their speedboats, they took over one of the fishing trawlers, which they used to board other unsuspecting trawlers.
Bissong lamented that the latest attack brought the total of deaths recorded to 44 from well over 200 attacks by pirates on fishing trawlers over a period of two years.
He said: “This escalation in piracy on fishing trawlers has caused a huge loss of lives and property and colossal loss to the industry. It has also resulted in a reduction of fishing areas since fishing companies and crew are now afraid to fish in most of the coastal fishing grounds.
“At present, the industry is on the verge of total collapse as crew members are no longer willing to sail on board for fear of losing their lives. Fishing companies are also now at a loss to understand what to do next and might be forced to close down as they can no longer carry the burden of dead bodies, which now seems to have become a common phenomenon.”
He lamented that the fishing industry was not only capital -intensive but was also labour-intensive with several hundreds of thousands of Nigerians depending on it for their livelihood.
“Besides providing protein rich fish to the Nigerian populace, the industry is among the top non-oil foreign exchange earners for the nation.
“The piracy, coupled with the high price of diesel on which the industry depends to run its trawlers has made fishing operations not only dangerous, but also unviable,” he said.