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Campaigner Lagi Toribau and Kiribati Law Enforcement Officer Taremon Korere in discussion with Captain Park Si-Joeng of the suspect Korean longliner 'Dong Won 117'.
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Although the Dong Won 117 is licensed to fish in Kiribati waters the
Dong Won fleet is notorious for operating on the wrong side of the law.
Dong Won ships have been sighted acting illegally throughout the
Eastern Pacific numerous times. We thought the ship was worth a routine
inspection.
The Dong Won 117 lived up to it's reputation on at least four counts. First, in what is becoming characteristic of legal ships in the Pacific, the Dong Wong 117 has been reporting intermittently through it's Vessel Monitoring System (VMS). The system allows the Foreign Fisheries Association (FFA) and individual countries to monitor fishing ships in the Pacific region. The FFA told the Dong Won 117's owners their system was faulty, only last week. Because of this she should have headed straight to the nearest port to get it fixed, and phoned to report her position every day until she got there. The Dong Won 117 failed to do this, so there is no record of where she has been.
Secondly, her last recorded port of call was Busan, Korea, 13 months ago. Typically Longliners can stay at sea for between 3 to 4 weeks before they need to resupply. Informal chat between our crew and theirs showed they had not been in port for a very long time - the first and most pressing bit of information needed was about who won the World Cup!
In order to stay out at sea, the longliner must have been resupplied by a 'bunker' ship. Bunkering is only legal if the supply ship is licensed and each transaction documented. Needless to say the Dong Won 117 hardly had any documents; the ones it did showed it to have bunkered with another boat with dodgy reporting.
Even more suspicious than sporadic reporting and patchy paperwork was the lack of fish. If a longliner of Dong Won's size had been fishing for 13 consecutive months it should have run out of hold space some time ago. Instead her 300 ton hold was barely more than half full. This suggests she was transhipping - offloading catch at sea, a mostly illegal practice which fishing boats use to avoid official monitoring or scrutiny of their hauls. Because it is so easy for ships to launder their catches this way, we are calling for a global ban on transhippping anywhere other than in port.
After the inspection we stayed with the Dong Won 117 through the night, waiting for the Kiribati marine authorities' patrol boat to arrive. Early in the morning the Dong Won 117 hauled in her lines and made a break for the high seas. Orders to stop were ignored and she steamed off at high seas, very suspicious behaviour.
The Dong Won 117 is owned by a large Korean corporation, Dong Won Industries. In addition to owning a fishing fleet Dong Won owns distribution and logistics companies. Dong Won's stock price is listed as a healthy US$54. Kirbati, in contrast, is a nation whose gross domestic product per person is a mere US$800. Dong Won has large ships, while Kirabati authorities have only one boat to patrol their 3 million square miles of water.
One of the problems stems from the fact that Korea as a country is paying pathetic license fees. In 2004 Korea paid Kiribati US$3.1 million for 135 longliners to fish in Kiribati. That amounts to about US$23,000 per vessel, the equivalent of about 23 tons of skipjack tuna. In the case of longliners they are after tuna with a much higher value, so the amount of tuna they have to catch to earn back their license fee is really a lot smaller. For Kiribati it is of course a lot of money, but for Korea and her businesses it is a very favourable investment.
The Dong Won 117 lived up to it's reputation on at least four counts. First, in what is becoming characteristic of legal ships in the Pacific, the Dong Wong 117 has been reporting intermittently through it's Vessel Monitoring System (VMS). The system allows the Foreign Fisheries Association (FFA) and individual countries to monitor fishing ships in the Pacific region. The FFA told the Dong Won 117's owners their system was faulty, only last week. Because of this she should have headed straight to the nearest port to get it fixed, and phoned to report her position every day until she got there. The Dong Won 117 failed to do this, so there is no record of where she has been.
Secondly, her last recorded port of call was Busan, Korea, 13 months ago. Typically Longliners can stay at sea for between 3 to 4 weeks before they need to resupply. Informal chat between our crew and theirs showed they had not been in port for a very long time - the first and most pressing bit of information needed was about who won the World Cup!
In order to stay out at sea, the longliner must have been resupplied by a 'bunker' ship. Bunkering is only legal if the supply ship is licensed and each transaction documented. Needless to say the Dong Won 117 hardly had any documents; the ones it did showed it to have bunkered with another boat with dodgy reporting.
Even more suspicious than sporadic reporting and patchy paperwork was the lack of fish. If a longliner of Dong Won's size had been fishing for 13 consecutive months it should have run out of hold space some time ago. Instead her 300 ton hold was barely more than half full. This suggests she was transhipping - offloading catch at sea, a mostly illegal practice which fishing boats use to avoid official monitoring or scrutiny of their hauls. Because it is so easy for ships to launder their catches this way, we are calling for a global ban on transhippping anywhere other than in port.
After the inspection we stayed with the Dong Won 117 through the night, waiting for the Kiribati marine authorities' patrol boat to arrive. Early in the morning the Dong Won 117 hauled in her lines and made a break for the high seas. Orders to stop were ignored and she steamed off at high seas, very suspicious behaviour.
The Dong Won 117 is owned by a large Korean corporation, Dong Won Industries. In addition to owning a fishing fleet Dong Won owns distribution and logistics companies. Dong Won's stock price is listed as a healthy US$54. Kirbati, in contrast, is a nation whose gross domestic product per person is a mere US$800. Dong Won has large ships, while Kirabati authorities have only one boat to patrol their 3 million square miles of water.
One of the problems stems from the fact that Korea as a country is paying pathetic license fees. In 2004 Korea paid Kiribati US$3.1 million for 135 longliners to fish in Kiribati. That amounts to about US$23,000 per vessel, the equivalent of about 23 tons of skipjack tuna. In the case of longliners they are after tuna with a much higher value, so the amount of tuna they have to catch to earn back their license fee is really a lot smaller. For Kiribati it is of course a lot of money, but for Korea and her businesses it is a very favourable investment.
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