Plans by international environmental NGOs to form an international non government agency to combat IUU fishing has received a mixed response from industry figures, reports Pieter Tesch.
The plans also propose Interpol taking an active role in international investigations and prosecutions.
They reacted with concern on learning that, at a conference organised by the Washington DC based PEW Charitable Trusts in September, some leading anti IUU fishing activists proposed to form an investigative international NGO agency that would work on its own initiative, wondering on whose authority such a body would operate and to whom it would be accountable.
Another suggestion to task Interpol’s wildlife unit with combating illegal fishing or poaching based on the definition of crimes against marine living resources under the UN Convention on the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS), was met by less hostility but still great scepticism by industry sources.
It was also learned that the same international operating anti IUU fishing activists will start to increasingly target the world’s leading international pelagic trawler and processing firms such as the Hong Kong based Pacific Andes and Dutch Parlevliet & van der Plas that operate outside the 200 mile economic exclusive zones (EEZ) in the Pacific, South Atlantic and/or have fishing rights in the EEZs of certain West African countries or have recently moved into Faroese and Icelandic waters, after these two countries allowed themselves more mackerel quota against the wishes of Norway and the EU.
The activists argue that the international operations of these major transnational pelagic firms, with their alleged economic and political power, as small pelagic fisheries are becoming more valuable and more important for human consumption, are more important and potentially more damaging to fish stocks than the operation of the traditional and opportunistic ‘rust bucket’ poacher fishing vessels.
