Overview

• The multi-week course is underway aboard the FAO cooperation vessel Intermares at the Port of Vigo and runs through late October.
• About 40 officials from a dozen African countries, including Cameroon, Gabon, Djibouti, Comoros, Mauritius, Mauritania, Benin, Senegal, Madagascar, Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Tunisia, Guinea and Seychelles, are receiving hands-on instruction in port inspections.
• The curriculum focuses on applying the Agreement on Port State Measures to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
• Spain’s government delegate Pedro Blanco, Galicia’s sea minister Marta Villaverde, and Port Authority president Carlos Botana attended the opening with representatives from FAO and the European Fisheries Control Agency.
• This is the seventh edition of the initiative and the fifth held in Vigo, following a July session that trained 35 inspectors from Ibero-American countries.