...The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates there are "700 foreign-owned vessels fully engaged in unlicensed fishing in Somali waters".

The collapse of the local fishing industry and subsequent poverty of coastal communities has been cited as one reason piracy has flourished in Somalia's lawless semi-autonomous province of Puntland.

Vessels from France, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Belize and Honduras exploit Somalia's fish stocks with virtual impunity, says Dr Clive Schofield's paper, Plundered Waters: Somalia's Maritime Resource Insecurity.

"It is particularly ironic that many of the nations that are presently contributing warships to the anti-piracy flotillas patrolling, or set to patrol, the waters off the Horn of Africa, are themselves directly linked to the foreign fishing vessels that are busily plundering Somalia's offshore resources," Dr Schofield, a researcher with the University of Wollongong's Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security.
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It was estimated that foreign fishing vessels were taking considerably more protein out of Somalia's waters than they were supplying to Somalia in the form of humanitarian food aid...