Killer vessel is headed for scrapyard

JANA-MARI SMITH



The vessel Ryazanovka, which has been at the centre of a storm around an application by a local Chinese businessman and his partners to export live marine mammals to Chinese zoos, is heading for the junkyard.

NamPort senior manager Elias Mwenyo yesterday confirmed that the vessel was being scrapped. He said it was not yet clear whether the vessel would be broken up at Walvis Bay or elsewhere.

The reason for the decision to dismantle the vessel, which was initially scheduled to undergo repairs this week, is the reportedly high cost of making it seaworthy again, Namibian Sun was informed. No official confirmation of that was available yesterday.

Sources yesterday claimed that local companies had been contacted to apply to buy the vessel for scrap.

Last week, Mwenyo confirmed that the vessel’s necessary safety certificates had expired and that it was scheduled to undergo repairs before the paperwork could be renewed. Without the necessary certificates the ship would not be allowed to leave the port of Walvis Bay, he explained.

Sources yesterday told Namibian Sun that the vessel was in a “really bad state” and would not be able to proceed to another port for the scrapping to be done there.

The source said it was likely she would need to be towed, which would be “quite expensive”.

Meanwhile, fisheries permanent secretary Moses Maurihungirire confirmed yesterday that the application for a permit to capture endangered marine mammals and export them to China was still with the minister of fisheries and marine resources, Bernhardt Esau.

Maurihungirire said he was not aware that the application had been withdrawn by the Chinese companies, as alleged in a public statement signed by the Ryazanovka’s captain in December.

Maurihungirire also questioned how a vessel in such bad shape could be expected to transport live animals to China.

In the December statement signed by the Ryazanovka’s master, Ilya Sharapov, he wrote that the “investment proposition” would be withdrawn because of a public outcry, as well as the ministry’s lack of response to the application after it was submitted in March 2016.

Yesterday, a legal representative of Jeff Huang, the Chinese businessmen whose company Welwitschia Aquatic & Wildlife Scientific Services, along with Beijing Ruier Animal Breeding & Promoting Co, applied for the permit from the Ministry of Fisheries in March last year, said she could not comment on the application or the vessel without instructions from her client.

Attorney Flora Gaes, who confirmed that she represented Huang in the matter, said Huang was not in Windhoek at the moment and she had been given “no instructions to comment on anything”.

Last year, Namibian Sun reported that Welwitschia Aquatic & Wildlife Scientific Services operated from the same premises as Sun Investment Group Namibia in Windhoek, the company owned by multimillionaire Jack Huang, the father of Jeff Huang.

At the time, both Huangs telephonically denied any knowledge of Welwitschia, of their relationship to each other and of their involvement in the application.

Yet documents showed that the physical and telephonic contact details for both companies are identical and a receptionist confirmed telephonically to Namibian Sun that Jeff Huang was the manager of Welwitschia Aquatic & Wildlife Scientific Services.

The application, which has been circulated widely, was harshly criticised by scientists and members of the public, locally and internationally. A petition asking the government to deny the permit had attracted close to 16 000 signatures by yesterday.

One of the chief concerns expressed in hundreds of letters sent to the ministry over the past few months, apart from the lack of transparency from authorities, is the lack of scientific accuracy contained in the application, which was described by a concerned wildlife scientist as “nonsensical.”

Furthermore, the proposal lists mainly species protected under several international conventions because they are listed as rare, endangered or threatened.

One scientist pointed out that the proposal lists an annual quota of 50 to 100 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins and up to 100 common bottlenose dolphins.

“There are no records of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins from Namibia, they don't occur here. The common bottlenose dolphins that do inhabit Namibian waters number fewer than 100 individuals in total, so it would effectively be the entire population of one of Namibia’s rarest mammals. This just demonstrates the complete lack of sound scientific data used in devising this proposal,” he said.

Moreover, the proposal falsely claimed that the live capture and export of these species would help Namibia to stop the “downward spiral trend in recent years, partly because overprotected cetacean species dramatically increased (sic)” leading to a “dramatic reduction” in fish stocks.

This claim was rubbished by scientists, who explained that there is very little data available on the impact of cetaceans, such as whales and dolphins, on fish stocks, but that the impact of the small populations of dolphins, whales and penguins compared to large-scale commercial fishing would be “minute”.

Moreover, international animal welfare groups pointed out that capturing wild animals and keeping them in captivity is inhumane and increasingly unsupported by marine parks and zoos globally.