West Africa suffers more than any region in the world from the impact of illegal overfishing, accounting for 40% of global illegal fishing activities, and is estimated to have cost the region's fisheries a combined $9.4 billion and over 300,000 jobs since 2010. 

The main market driver is to produce fishmeal for intensive aquaculture outside Africa. Sierra Leone has been particularly affected and this has impacted food security, with wild catch yields in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana projected to drop by 50% due to overfishing by 2050.