Somali pirates’ unintended gift to Kenyan fishermen

MALINDI, Kenya | People here have one thing to thank Somali pirates for: better fishing.

In past years, illegal commercial trawlers parked off Somalia’s coast and scooped up the ocean’s contents. Now, fishermen on the northern coast of neighboring Kenya say, the trawlers are not coming because of pirates.

“There is a lot of fish now; there is plenty of fish. There is more fish than people can actually use because the international fishermen have been scared away by the pirates,” said Athman Seif, the director of the Malindi Marine Association.

On one early morning, as the sun bathed their wooden dhow in a pale yellow, four fishermen jumped out of their rickety 15-foot boat, grabbed a hand-woven straw basket and waded ashore. The basket held the bounty: 175 pounds of sailfish, barracuda and red snapper, the haul from a 12-hour night on the ocean. Each fisherman stood to make $12, enough in this town to be considered a decent night’s work.

Fishermen and sportsmen say they’ve been catching more fish than ever. Howard Lawrence-Brown, who owns Kenya Deep Sea Fishing, said fishing stocks over the last year have been up “enormously — across all species.”

“We had the best marlin season ever last year,” he said. “The only explanation is that somebody is not targeting them somewhere. … There’s definitely no question about it: The lack of commercial fishing has made a difference.”

Fishermen in the region have seen their incomes and quality of life rise. New boats and better equipment can be seen on the water.

In Malindi, a second-tier tourist town whose tastiest seafood restaurant is called “The Old Man and the Sea,” after the Ernest Hemingway novel, the income of many families is determined by the number of fish caught during a half-day’s turn at sea.

On a recent weekday, fisherman Abdi Ali said he has more money of late to send his kids to high school, which costs money in Kenya. As Mr. Ali spoke, a man nearby held up a 2&189;-foot, 9-pound red snapper to motorists on Malindi’s main oceanfront drive in hopes of enticing a sale.

“This year, the amount of fish we have caught has been very good. We get about 150 kilograms to 200 and even 300 kilograms, depending on how much we fish,” Mr. Ali said. Three hundred kilograms is about 660 pounds.

“There were fish that had disappeared and have come back like the barracuda, oranda, red snapper and other types,” he said. “We are very happy now that there are so many fish.”

Fishermen in Somalia, too, say they’ve seen increased catches. Traders at a Mogadishu fish market are happy because more fish means lower prices, which means more Somalis can afford to buy.

“I remember some days I used to go to the sea early to catch fish and would return with no fish, but nowadays there are plenty. You can catch it everywhere,” said fisherman Bakar Osman, 50. “I do not know the reason, but I think the foreign fishing vessels, which used to loot our fish, were scared away by pirates.”

Somali pirates have increased attacks the last two years because of the millions of dollars in ransom they can command. They currently hold close to a dozen vessels and more than 200 crew hostage. Fishermen here acknowledge the horror of the attacks: They occasionally are harassed by pirates themselves.

Before the pirates came out in big numbers, fishing longliners roamed the coasts, Mr. Lawrence-Brown said, laying out miles of line.

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