Plans to build an industrial fishing port and a ship-breaking yard along the Wasini Channel off Kenya’s coast threaten the livelihoods of local communities who depend on fishing, seaweed farming, and ecotourism, residents say.
- Underwater drilling carried out as part of surveys for the proposed port last November damaged coral reefs, while drilling for the ship-breaking yard destroyed seaweed crops.
- Community members say they fear even more devastating impacts once the projects, which also include a smelting plant, get underway in earnest.
Feisal Abdalla spends his days on the sea, taking tourists on whale-watching, snorkeling and diving trips. He and his wife, Amina Sabel, also manage a string of ecotourism cottages along the shore of Wasini Island facing the Kenyan mainland across a kilometer-wide channel. Their own house is in the middle of the row , surrounded by indigenous coastal trees and the sound of birds and crickets, and waves crashing on the shoreline below.
But the serenity of Wasini was shattered last November. For close to a month, the sound of underwater drilling reverberated along the shore day and night as engineering teams carried out bathymetric surveys for a proposed fishing port across the channel at Shimoni. The drilling disturbed more than just the island’s tranquility. Villagers on either side of the Wasini Channel say it led to the bleaching of corals vital to local fisheries, and the loss of seaweed planted by farmers along the coastline here.
The Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) plans to build an industrial fishing port at Shimoni. The authority is studying four possible sites at which to build a 150-meter-long (500-foot) jetty, and a 4,000-square-meter (43,000-square-foot) cold storage facility. The project will be funded by the government to the tune of $200 million and the contract has been awarded to China Communications Construction Company. The KPA says the port will provide opportunities for “large scale exploitation of the fish industry bolstered by a ready market and value addition which will spur the creation of special economic zones.”
To ensure large purse seiners and trawlers can use the port, parts of the channel will have to be dredged, according to the environmental impact assessment carried out by Envasses Environmental Consultants Limited, a Kenyan company. The EIA concedes that the dredging will potentially impact community conservation areas known as tengefu, meaning “set aside” in Kiswahili.
The authority promises to implement measures to minimize environmental damage. But locals say the port will have lasting, damaging effects on the environment, tourism, and artisanal fishing in the area.
A community leading on conservation
Tengefu is a practice in which coastal communities set aside no-take zones, often around coral reefs that are breeding areas for fish. When fishing was all done from dhows and smaller boats, the corals were at very little risk. However, as bigger boats and different equipment arrived on the scene here in the early 1960s, the reefs were in danger from things like dragging anchors and blasting, also called dynamite fishing or fish bombing, a destructive and illegal type of fishing.
In 2012, the people of Shimoni, Wasini and other neighboring villages revived the traditional practice of declaring tengefus to both increase their catch and conserve the environment. They also began planting seagrass and restoring mangrove foreststhat had been cut down for construction.
Not far from Abdalla’s cottages is the Wasini Beach Management Unit office. Beach management units are found in every coastal community in Kenya; they are civic bodies under the Fisheries Act that bring fishermen, boat owners, fish traders, and others to manage fish landing stations and management of marine resources. Muhdin Musa, the chair of Wasini’s BMU, said its members also work to restore corals and plant seagrass in the Wasini tengefu. The BMU has also developed and managed diving and snorkeling sites.
