Here in the north of Mozambique, the country’s over-exploited fish stocks and delicate coral reefs are prey to cross-border marauders.
Tanzanian fisherman sneak into Mozambique’s waters, having depleted the seas to the north. Some are armed with dynamite.
“They have blasted their own reefs and now they are coming here,” said Marcos Pereira, a marine biologist with an environmental pressure group called the Forum para a Natureza em Perigo.
The Tanzanians, like many Mozambicans, also use nets which become entangled with the reefs and damage the fragile coral.
And they send down divers who beat and break the coral, sending frightened fish in the direction of their waiting nets.
Despite strong legislation designed to protect Mozambique’s marine resources, the country’s maritime authorities have few vessels to combat such illegal fishing, whether by Mozambicans or foreigners.
But in 2000, in a one-week sweep in the waters of the recently declared Quirimbas National Park, the authorities captured 116 Tanzanian-owned nets.
Mozambique’s coral reefs are already under threat because of massive floods and cyclones caused by new and disastrous weather patterns, believed to be the result of the El Nino phenomenon. The storms smother the reefs with silt and sand.
Along the coast these have also triggered an increase in water temperature, which is killing or “bleaching” the reefs.
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