A new data-driven process to further crackdown on illegal tuna fishing in the Pacific will help reduce the loss of local fish industry earnings by up to AUD 1 billion. ?
A recent two-week surveillance operation to detect illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities in the region has confirmed how necessary data collection is to deter and eliminate fish plundering from the world’s biggest and most important tuna fishery.??
More than 320 vessels were sighted, 206 were boarded and 27 infringements were recorded during the operation last month [November].??
Kurukuru 2012 was the region’s biggest ever surveillance operation and involved five maritime patrol aircraft, 12 patrol boats, a frigate and a Coast Guard boat all surveying an area of approximately 30 million square kilometers.
??“Controlling illegal fishing in the region is complex,” explained Bryan Scott, Fisheries IUU liaison officer for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC).??“There are multiple organizations and nations in the Pacific that govern the rules that fishers can fish under, depending on when and where they are.?
?“To cross check and analyze a vessel’s catch history and other information during the time of a single boat boarding is extremely difficult, because it is all paper-based.”??
Regional estimates put lost earnings from activities such as under-reporting or misreporting catch sizes at anywhere from the millions to over a billion.??
The SPC and the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) are working together to put exact figures on these losses by building a comprehensive data network.
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