Tag Archives: port state measures on illegal fishing

Rich Environmental Criminals

Leave a reply

“The brutality and profit margins in the area of environmental crime are almost unimaginable. Cartels have taken over entire sectors of illegal mining, the timber trade and waste disposal,” according to Sasa Braun, intelligence officer with Interpol’s environmental security program  Braun listed examples. Villages in Peru that had resisted deforestation efforts had been razed to the ground by criminal gangs in retribution, he said, while illegal fishing fleets had thrown crew overboard to avoid having to pay them.

Environmental crime has many faces and includes the illegal wildlife trade, illegal logging, illegal waste disposal and the illegal discharge of pollutants into the atmosphere, water or soil. It is a lucrative business for transnational crime networks. Illegal waste trafficking, for example, accounts for $10 to 12 billion (€10.28 to 12.34 billion) annually, according to 2016 figures from the United Nations Environment Program. Criminal networks save on the costs of proper disposal and obtaining permits. For some crime networks, the profits from waste management are so huge that it has become more interesting than drug trafficking…The profits from illegal logging have also grown…

According to the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), environmental crime — the third most lucrative area of crime worldwide after drug trafficking and counterfeit goods — generates profits of between $110 billion and $280 billion each year.

Excerpts from Environmental crime: Profit can be higher than drug trade, DW, Oct. 16, 2022

Modern Slavery and the Collapse of Fisheries

Leave a reply

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing accounts for a staggering 20-50% of the global catch. It is one reason fish stocks are plummeting: just a fifth of commercial species are sustainably fished. Illegal operators rob mostly poor coastal states of over $20bn a year and threaten the livelihoods of millions of small fishermen. A huge amount of illicit fishing happens on licensed boats, too. They might catch more than their quota, or falsely declare their catch as abundant albacore tuna instead of the more valuable bigeye. In port fisheries inspectors are always overstretched. If an operator is caught, for instance, fishing with too fine a net, the fine and confiscation are seen as a cost of doing business. Many pay up and head straight back out to sea.

The damage from illicit fishing goes well beyond fish stocks. Operators committing one kind of crime are likely to be committing others, too—cutting the fins off sharks, or even running guns or drugs. Many are also abusing their crews… A lot of them are in debt bondage…. Unscrupulous captains buy and sell these men and boys like chattel. 

Too often, the ultimate beneficiaries of this trade are hard to hook because they hide behind brass-plate companies and murky joint ventures. Pursuing them requires the same kind of sleuthing involved in busting criminal syndicates. An initiative led by Norway to go after transnational-fisheries crime is gaining support. Much more cross-border co-operation is needed.

At sea, technology can help. Electronic monitoring promises a technological revolution on board—Australian and American fleets are leading the way. Cameras combined with machine learning can spot suspicious behavior and even identify illicit species being brought on board…. Equally, national regulators should set basic labor standards at sea. If countries fail to follow the rules, coastal states should bar their fishing fleets from their waters. Fish-eating nations should allow imports only from responsible fleets.

Above all, governments should agree at the World Trade Organization to scrap the subsidies that promote overfishing. Of the $35bn a year lavished on the industry, about $22bn helps destroy fish stocks, mainly by making fuel too cheap. Do away with subsidies and forced labor, and half of high-seas fishing would no longer be profitable. Nor would that of China’s environmentally devastating bottom-trawling off the west African coast. 

Excerpt from Monsters of the deep: Illicit fishing devastates the seas and abuses crews, Economist, Oct., 22, 2020

What really happens in the seas? GlobalFishing Watch, Sea Shepherd, Trygg Mat Tracking

Just Forbid It – Fishing: Fishing and Marine Protected Areas

Leave a reply

Fish, whether wild caught or farmed, now make up nearly a fifth of the animal protein that human beings eat….In this context, running the world’s fisheries efficiently might seem a sensible idea. In practice, that rarely happens. Even well-governed coastal countries often pander to their fishing lobbies by setting quotas which give little respite to battered piscine populations. Those with weak or corrupt governments may not even bother with this. Deals abound that permit outsiders legal but often badly monitored access to such countries’ waters. And many rogue vessels simply enter other people’s fishing grounds and steal their contents.

There may be a way to improve the supply side: increase the area where fishing is forbidden altogether.  This paradoxical approach, which involves the creation of so-called marine protected areas (MPAs), has already been demonstrated on several occasions to work locally. A new study “A global network of marine protected areas for food “in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…explores the idea of extending MPAs elsewhere. If the right extensions are picked designating a mere 5% more of the world’s oceans as MPAs—which would triple the area protected—could increase the future global catch of the 811 species they looked at by more than 20%. That corresponds to an extra 10m tonnes of food a year.

The idea that restricting fishing would permit more fish to be caught may seem counterintuitive, but the logic is simple. Fish in MPAs can grow larger than those at constant risk of being pulled from the ocean. Larger fish produce more eggs. More eggs mean more fry. Many of these youngsters then grow up and move out of the safe zone, thus becoming available to catch in adjoining areas where fishing is permitted…

MPAs are especially beneficial for the worst-managed areas, most of which are tropical—and in particular for overfished species…They also have the virtue of simplicity. The setting of quotas is open to pressure to overestimate of how many fish can safely be caught…This is difficult enough for countries with well-developed fisheries-research establishments. For those without such it is little more than guesswork…Setting the rules for an MPA is, by contrast, easy. You stick up a metaphorical sign that says, “No fishing”. Knowing who is breaking the rules is easy, too. If your gear is in the water, you are fishing illegally.

Excerpt from Fishing: Stopping some fishing would increase overall catches. Economist, Oct. 31, 2020

Data Against Fish Poachers

Leave a reply

Australia is at the forefront of efforts to combat poaching. Its patrol ships have chased illegal trawlers almost as far as South Africa, a distance of 4,600 miles, to stop the plunder of prized Patagonian toothfish—sold in the U.S. as Chilean sea bass.  Australian government scientists and Vulcan Inc., Mr. Allen’s private company, have developed a notification system that alerts authorities when suspected pirate vessels from West Africa arrive at ports on remote Pacific islands and South America.

The system relies on anticollision transponders installed on nearly all oceangoing craft as a requirement under maritime law. These devices are detectable by satellite.  A statistical model helps identify vessels whose transponders have been intentionally shut off. Other data identifies fishing boats that are loitering in risk areas, such as near national maritime boundaries…

“On one hand you can’t see them [if their transponder is switched off], but on the other it means they’ve just flagged themselves as avoiding surveillance, and as a risk indicator, that’s at the top of the list,” he said…

And a third of all fish sold in the U.S. is believed to be caught illegally. Seafood consumption in wealthy nations has soared in recent decades, increasing reliance on imports. Between 1980 and 2014, U.S. seafood consumption rose 60%, with imports now meeting 90% of the demand, according to Global Fishing Watch and the World Wildlife Fund….

Illegal fishing causes commercial losses of up to $23 billion a year world-wide, according to the U.N….

The researchers’ satellite-based tracking tool will begin operating in October 2017 and will be free to access. It was set up in response to a treaty aimed at eradicating illegal fishing that came into force on June 2016.The Agreement on Port State Measures…

China is the world’s largest seafood producer, followed by Indonesia, the U.S. and Russia. The most critical area for poaching is off the coast of West Africa, where illegal, unauthorized and unregulated fishing accounts an estimated 40% of fish caught, according to the World Ocean Review. Other areas of concern include the western and southern Pacific and the southwest Atlantic. Illegal trawlers contribute to overfishing that threatens marine ecosystems and food security in some of the poorest countries.

Last year, Argentina’s coast guard opened fire on and sank a Chinese trawler that was fishing illegally in its waters. South Korea’s coast guard fired on Chinese poachers several months later.  Australian authorities have said geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea, a rich fishing ground, may be driving more illegal fishing vessels into the South Pacific from China, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Excerpts from Trawling Scientists Find a Better Way to Reel In Illegal Fishing, Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2017

How to Catch Illegal Fishers: port state measures

Leave a reply

The Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (the Agreement)  entered into force on June 5, 2016.  The main purpose of the Agreement is to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing through the implementation of robust port State measures. The Agreement envisages that parties, in their capacities as port States, will apply the Agreement in an effective manner to foreign vessels when seeking entry to ports or while they are in port. …

The Agreement provides an opportunity for port States to check and verify that vessels not flying their flags and that seek permission to enter their ports, or that are already in their ports, have not engaged in IUU fishing.  The Agreement also enhances flag States control over vessels as the Agreement requires the flag State to take certain actions, at the request of the port State, or when vessels flying their flag are determined to have been involved in IUU fishing….

Furthermore, the Agreement’s seeks to prevent the occurrence of so-called ports of non-compliance (formerly known as ports of convenience). Countries operating ports of non compliance do not regulate effectively the fishing and fishing-related activities that take place in the ports, including determining whether IUU-caught fish are landed, transshipped, processed and sold in the ports. Ratifying and acceding to the Agreement and implementing its measures robustly will reduce the number of ports of non compliance and opportunities for vessels to dispose of IUU-caught fish with relative ease. Port state measures are a cost-effective tool in ensuring compliance with national law and regional conservation and management measures adopted by RFMOs. This is because port States do not have to expend time, effort and resources in monitoring, pursuing and inspecting vessels at sea. Port inspections and controls are very much cheaper and safer than alternative, more conventional air and surface compliance tools. Port State measures, if used in conjunction with catch documentation schemes, have the potential to be one of the most cost-effective and efficient means of combating IUU fishing.

The Agreement’s most potent effect in terms of its potential to curb IUU fishing is that through the implementation of its provisions, including those relating to denial of access to ports, port inspections, prohibition of landing, and detention and sanction, can prevent fish caught from IUU fishing activities from reaching national and international markets. By making it more difficult to market fish through the application of port State measures, the economic incentive to engage in IUU fishing is reduced. In addition, many countries have also decided to prohibit trade with countries that do not have port state measures in place.

Excerpt from Food and Agriculture Organization  FAO Website.