Dodgy and dodgier: pirate fishing around the world

Pirates of the Pacific

 
 
Over the course of 16 days, we boarded five suspicious vessels.  Four of them were fishing with apparently "faulty" reporting systems.
 
If these boats aren’t reporting, it means there is no way of knowing how long they stay out to sea for, nor how much (or what) they catch.  We say if your reporting system is broken, you should not be allowed to fish until it's fixed.

Tuna in trouble

 
Onboard the Esperanza, campaigner Lagi Toribau said, “Two key Pacific tuna species are already in big trouble and, unless we see a drastic cut in fishing rates, they will be severely depleted within three years. Distant foreign nations take nearly all our fish, giving Pacific nations a pitiful 5 percent of the US$2 billion the fish is worth annually.”
 
People in these far off nations including Japan, US, EU, Korea and Taiwan, don’t know that they may be eating tuna stolen from people whose lives depend on it. "Governments must act now to regulate their ships, we as consumers must start questioning where our fish comes from, and retailers must refuse to stock stolen fish," said Lagi.

Check out the "Esperanza on Patrol" from Ocean Defender TV:

...and cod in crisis

 
In Sweden retailers have been doing just that after our campaign revealing the extent of illegal cod for sale in Europe.  Meanwhile, in Poland, our activists found several pirates last week.
 
The crew on the Arctic Sunrise first spotted several suspicious trawlers on Wednesday 13 September.  The day after they confiscated illegal nets and took the largely undersized cod out of them. The area was supposed to be closed to fishing until September 15. However authorities chose to give them back to the fishermen claiming they "lacked the authority to confiscate them".
 
One fisherman blamed the incident on the nets, saying that they had drifted into the closed area, an obvious lie, not to mention quite a feat considering the nets were firmly anchored to the sea bed.
 
Campaigner Ida Udovic explains: "They hadn't moved an inch since he placed them there. The Polish government need to seriously improve their system for fisheries control, much more money has to be invested in capacity for inspections and law enforcement."
 
Sound familiar?
 

Making piracy history

 
We are demanding a global network of marine reserves to shut down the pirate trade and allow stocks to recover. Marine reserves make controls much easier than the current patchwork of regulations that have made control impossible. Additionally all fishing vessels should have a device onboard enabling electronic surveillance, controls ashore and off shore should increase and a black list for all vessels caught cheating should be established.

We will be taking all the findings we gathered in the Pacific to the regional Tuna Commission when they meet in Brisbane, Australia, later this month.