The Philippines Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), an agency under the country’s Department of Agriculture, has announced it will petition the Philippines Supreme Court to review its recent ruling that voided mandatory commercial vessel tracking.
BFAR issued Fisheries Administrative Order (FAO) 266 in 2020, which required all commercial fishing operators to equip their vessels with satellite tracking and electronic reporting systems. That decree was soon challenged by commercial fishing groups, which argued that mandatory location monitoring infringed on proprietary trade secrets and violated their constitutional rights.
On 30 July, the Philippines Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision declaring FAO 266 unconstitutional and ruled that BFAR failed to prove how mandatory tracking hardware directly prevents illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, adding that automated tracking largely generated data redundant to existing reporting disclosures.
“While recognizing that combating illegal fishing and protecting the country’s marine resources are legitimate and compelling state interests, the Supreme Court emphasized that these objectives cannot justify measures that unnecessarily infringe constitutional rights, particularly when the same goals may be achieved through lawful and less restrictive means,” the court said.
In response, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. defended the order, emphasizing that digital oversight is crucial for fisheries enforcement.
“We are fairly confident the Supreme Court will reconsider the ruling and allow us to use this internationally recognized vessel monitoring system as the most effective way to deal with IUU fishing as it relies on electronic data and not manual filing of commercial fishing firms,” Laurel Jr. said.
Beyond simple location tracking, BFAR said that vessel surveillance enables authorities to verify harvest origins, monitor restricted zones, pursue illegal operators, and generate data for sustainable fisheries management.
Oceana Vice President Von Hernandez condemned the Supreme Court’s decision as “a death sentence” for municipal fishing and small-scale fishers, warning that stripping away FAO 266 effectively blinds enforcement agencies and invites commercial vessels to encroach unchecked into the nation’s 15-kilometer municipal water zone, which is supposed to be legally reserved for artisanal fishers.
“It is big fishing interest that wins to the demise of the poorest fisherfolk who will now have to share their fishing ground with more massive commercial fishing vessels,” the conservation NGO said.
Oceana added that the decision comes at a time when Philippine fisheries are already seeing sharp production downturns, with catch totals dropping by 45 million kilograms annually over the past 13 years and 88 percent of assessed fish stocks classified as overfished.
Additionally, Oceana explained poor traceability directly led to the recent closure of the U.S. market to Philippine blue swimming crab – a sector valued at USD 50 million (EUR 43.3 million) – and warned that dismantling FAO 266 forces reliance on paper recordkeeping and guesswork that foreign buyers such as the U.S. reject and threaten the nation's status with other markets such as the E.U.
Oceana also highlighted a procedural notice written by Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen in his dissenting opinion on the case.
Leonen stated that small-scale fishers who sought to intervene were turned away, depriving them of an opportunity to present their case, and that the tribunal's refusal to evaluate perspectives beyond the primary litigants' positions constituted a denial of equitable justice that should not recur.
"A government that cannot see cannot enforce its laws, and a government that will not enforce its rules has abandoned the fisherfolk it swore to protect," Hernandez said, urging BFAR to file an immediate appeal while urging lawmakers and local authorities to uphold coastal community rights, enforce fisheries transparency, and enact binding legislation that permanently safeguards municipal waters against future corporate legal challenges.
This is not the first time a case about vessel monitoring has wound its way to a nation’s highest court.
In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of plaintiff fishermen in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and, in the process, overturned the Chevron deference – a legal precedent that gave federal agencies wide latitude in interpreting congressional statutes.
The origins of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo case traced back to 2020, when NOAA Fisheries issued new requirements forcing some commercial fishermen to pay for at-sea monitors. Unhappy with those out-of-pocket costs – which they claimed could be more than USD 700 (EUR 640) per day – some of the fishermen sued, eventually spiraling into a larger issue about regulatory overreach.
Though the fishers won their case, the Supreme Court only decided to rule on the legal question of whether the Chevron deference should continue and remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island to rule on the issue of at-sea monitors, which the district court upheld.
