Greenpeace today launched a first global database of blacklisted, illegal fishing vessels, in a bid to tackle the huge problem of illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing.
The Greenpeace database (http://oceans.greenpeace.org/blacklist), which was launched at the meeting of the committee on Fisheries of the Food and Agriculture Organisations (FAO) in Rome, aims to publicly identify vessels which are involved in so-called ‘pirate fishing’, to expose the lack of action by the authorities to prevent the illegal trade.
Today, Greenpeace also released a report showing that the attempts at voluntary measures to curb pirate fishing by governments have had little effect on the levels of illegal fishing in some of the poorest and most desperate areas of action in the world, particularly the west coast of Africa.
The Greenpeace report shows that six years after the member countries of the FAO approved an International Plan of Action to curb illegal fishing, the problem is very far from being solved. It includes evidence gathered last year when the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, spent two months documenting the activities of foreign fleets off the coast of Guinea Conakry. That investigation discovered that almost half of the 92 fishing vessels encountered in Guinea’s waters were fishing illegally, or linked to illegal fishing activities. It has been estimated that sub-Saharan Africa loses around $1 billion a year due to the activities of such illegal trawling fleets.
Greenpeace campaigners attending the United Nations fisheries meeting in Rome demanded that governments must translate the existing voluntary frameworks and international initiatives into hard law. The international environmental organisation also demanded that the special requirements of developing countries in fighting illegal fishing be taken into account.
