Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 9
Trend:
The main reason of illegal fishing on Caspian Sea in northern provinces of Iran is the great number of unemployed people, the IRNA news agency quoted Mokhtar Akhondi, the Deputy Director General for Fishing Affairs of Iran Fisheries Organization as saying.
He said the illegal fishermen don’t spare even the bony fishes migrating towards rivers.
Research shows that those fishermen don’t understand the significance of this issue and go on fishing in order to provide their welfare, he said.
"The downturn of water level and lack of care for sea fauna have resulted in reduction of bony fish reserves in the Caspian sea,” the Iranian official said.
"In order to protect the sea resources, it is necessary to arrange cooperation between all concerned agencies of Iran. For instance, in parallel with protection of the resources, people can benefit from them economically by using them in accordance with rules," said Akhondi.
He also noted that the natural reproduction capability of bony fishes has decreased by 95 percent.
"Even artificial breeding and releasing them into the sea cannot cope with the level of fishing due to water contamination rate in the rivers and the Caspian Sea. If no attention is paid to ecology of the Caspian Sea, if the rivers and the sea are not protected, the level of fishing will decrease from year to year and finally we will witness great reduction in revenues," he explained.
“The scale of illegal fishing in the Caspian Sea is too big. The employees of the Iran Fisheries Organization also cannot cope alone with the illegal fishermen, because most of these fishermen need to sell the caught fishes in order to provide their welfare,” Akhondi said.