EXCLUSIVE: Lost Kenyan Crew of Fugitive Taiwanese Fish-Poacher Returns Home

 by Venatrix Fulmen

VOI, KENYA – (ecop-marine)  Three Kenyan crew members of infamous Taiwanese fishing vessel FV INTMAS 6 (alias FV TAWARIQ 2) returned from the Far East to Kenya and were welcomed happily by their families. 

A fourth Kenyan sailor of that crew is reportedly also coming back home from Bangkok as the fugitive vessel is at the moment on the way between Malaysia and Bangkok, the East African Seafarers Programme reports.

The Taiwanese fish poaching operation by a whole fleet of vessels scooping the Tanzanian, Kenyan and Somali waters while operating under a fake Omani management while transshipping their loot through the Seychelles, was busted last year when in a joint Tanzanian and South African operation one of the vessels – FV TAWARIQ 1 – was arrested by the authorities. Since then the 35 crew members of that vessel rot in a Tanzanian jail and one Kenyan sailor already died in the Tanzanian prison under unclear circumstances. His body is still kept at the Tanzanian mortuary because neither government nor ship-owner have come forward to assist the family in paying the costs for collecting and repatriating the body to Kenya for burial.

Upon realizing that one of their vessels had been nabbed all the other three fish-poachers fled the East-African waters via the Seychelles back to the Far East, taking also their Kenyan crew members with them. 

Since then and for nearly a year the families of the four Kenyan sailors on FV INTMAS 6 (aka TAWARIQ 2), who were  hired by a Chinese shipping agent in Kenya, were desperate to know the fate of their relatives, while the shipping agent, who is now also held in a Tanzanian prison in connection with the arrest of FV TAWARIQ 1, remained mum. 

Families were worried, because since TAWARIQ 3 caught fire off Mauritius and TAWARIQ 4 is now anchored in Singapore,  there was for a long time no word of TAWARIQ 2 (FV INMAS 6) and her crew until a search was started and the found crew members convinced and helped to return home safely.
Obviously better governmental oversight into the employment regime of such vessels and better development of sustainable local fisheries could ensure that in future no sailor involuntarily ends up in such criminal ventures by far-off companies, but will it be achieved in times where also high governmental offices in Indian Ocean coastal states often stand accused of corruption and collusion with foreign fish-poaching operations?

The case of long-liner FV SAKOBA, now held at the Somali coast will prove, if the Spanish and the Kenyan Government can work together to free the seamen as soon as possible and then investigate the whole case or if they first will be pre-occupied with covering the tracks of the joint-venture in these murky waters off the East African coasts where overfishing is still rampant.