Why the Namibian moratorium on sardine fishing must continue

Blog post on Conservation Namibia by Namibian Chamber of Environment, 15th November 2021.

After decades of overfishing combined with environmental changes, Namibia's sardine (pilchard) population finally collapsed. Falling by 99.5% from an estimated 11 million tonnes in the 1960s to a tiny 50,000 tonnes in 2015, this resource has been well and truly exhausted. Despite calls for a moratorium on sardine fishing by scientists since 1995, this was only implemented in 2018 for a period of three years. The Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR) is now contemplating reopening sardine fishing, but have the stocks recovered sufficiently?