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200 miles South West Guinea Bissau. Chinese fishing boats Lian Run 24 and Lian Run 29 illegally transshipping frozen fish boxes onto Binar 4 Panama reefer. Greenpeace and the Environmental Justice Foundation are working in partnership to expose the scandal of pirate fishing, as part of the year - long Greenpeace Defending Our Oceans expedition to highlight a range of threats to the oceans.
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"The fact that we had to publish a global database of blacklisted illegal fishing vessels demonstrates clearly just how little concrete action states have taken to stop the pillage of our oceans," said oceans campaigner Sari Tolvanen.
Modern commercial fishing is a global business. When a ship gets into legal trouble it can often change its flag state or name, then show up in another port. Information sharing using a global database will help with tracking suspect ships wherever they go. Supply vessels, refrigerated cargo ships and the companies and owners behind them may also be in the database.
The database will initially contain information from official sources; at a later stage it will also become an interactive tool, where coastal communities and fishers can report information about irresponsible vessels and their owners.
Meeting in Rome
The blacklist was launched in Rome today, where a biannual UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's Fisheries Committee meeting is taking place. At the meeting, the issues of blacklist databases and licensed fishing vessels databases is on the agenda once again. We also brought our new report to the meeting exposing just how little has been done in the last five years to stop IUU fishing, particularly in regions like West Africa. Our investigations in Guinea last year found that almost half of the 92 fishing vessels we 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.
Six years ago, the FAO approved an International Plan of Action to combat illegal fishing, but little has been done so far.
Our team at the meeting is passing out bookmarks with oceans.greenpeace.org/blacklist on one side, and fishing-vessel-whitelist.org on the other. The whitelist site is actually a spoof, pointing out that so far states have failed in their responsibility to create such a database.
Of course, with only three ships Greenpeace does not have the capacity to police the world's oceans. That is the job of governments. We're hoping that our database will spur them into action - including the creation of an official global blacklist of fishing vessels, along with a whitelist of legitimate/legal fishing vessels. In the mean time, we hope countries with widespread pirate fishing in their waters - particularly developing country coastal communities - will benefit from our blacklist database.
Modern commercial fishing is a global business. When a ship gets into legal trouble it can often change its flag state or name, then show up in another port. Information sharing using a global database will help with tracking suspect ships wherever they go. Supply vessels, refrigerated cargo ships and the companies and owners behind them may also be in the database.
The database will initially contain information from official sources; at a later stage it will also become an interactive tool, where coastal communities and fishers can report information about irresponsible vessels and their owners.
Meeting in Rome
The blacklist was launched in Rome today, where a biannual UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's Fisheries Committee meeting is taking place. At the meeting, the issues of blacklist databases and licensed fishing vessels databases is on the agenda once again. We also brought our new report to the meeting exposing just how little has been done in the last five years to stop IUU fishing, particularly in regions like West Africa. Our investigations in Guinea last year found that almost half of the 92 fishing vessels we 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.
Six years ago, the FAO approved an International Plan of Action to combat illegal fishing, but little has been done so far.
Our team at the meeting is passing out bookmarks with oceans.greenpeace.org/blacklist on one side, and fishing-vessel-whitelist.org on the other. The whitelist site is actually a spoof, pointing out that so far states have failed in their responsibility to create such a database.
Of course, with only three ships Greenpeace does not have the capacity to police the world's oceans. That is the job of governments. We're hoping that our database will spur them into action - including the creation of an official global blacklist of fishing vessels, along with a whitelist of legitimate/legal fishing vessels. In the mean time, we hope countries with widespread pirate fishing in their waters - particularly developing country coastal communities - will benefit from our blacklist database.
Visit the blacklist
