Time to tackle illegal fishing

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing includes poaching in national waters and unregulated fishing on high seas. It is common when management systems are weak or corrupt, where the value of the fish is high and where enforcing laws is difficult, as it is in remote seas and developing countries.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing causes several problems:

• It threatens the sustainability of fish stocks through overexploitation and prevents governments from monitoring catches and developing good management strategies.
• It deprives local fishermen of resources and creates conflict between them and those fishing illegally.
• Illegal boats without specialised equipment can damage marine birds, seals and turtles. By ignoring conservation laws and safety practices, illegal fishing vessels also experience lower costs and cause huge revenue losses for the legitimate fishing industry. This supports a climate of illegality and may add to wider national governance problems.

Governments are concerned that illegal fishing undermines their attempts to manage fish resources, especially on the high seas. Each country has legal control over fishing in their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Regional Fisheries Management Organisations control high seas fishing, but they only have legal power over member countries. IUU fishing in high seas is usually practised by boats registered in countries that have not signed these agreements. This makes it difficult to control.

The global scale of illegal fishing

A study by the UK Marine Resources Assessment Group in 2005 estimated that the global value of illegal fishing is between US$ 4 billion and US$ 9 billion annually. This is significant for developing countries, where the value lost can be up to five percent of Gross National Product. The study estimated that IUU fishing in sub-Saharan African EEZs (calculated as the first sale value of illegally caught fish) is worth almost US$1 billion; this is mostly by vessels from developed countries. The review also identified a link between the standard of governance in a developing country and the amount of illegal fishing in its waters.

The international response

In 2003, a group of fisheries ministers and heads of international non-government organisations created the High Seas Task Force to tackle IUU fishing and the difficulties in reducing it. In March 2006, the task force identified several priorities:

• expand the capabilities of the International Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS) Network to analyse specific IUU problems and provide greater training to its members
• develop a global information system on vessels capable of fishing on the high seas
• improve high seas governance by encouraging more states to ratify the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement
• encourage Regional Fisheries Management Organisations to work more effectively by coordinating their MCS activities
• increase scientific knowledge of the effects of IUU fishing by creating a monitoring network and increasing scientific observation on legal vessels
• assist developing countries with their actions against IUU fishing by developing MCS activities.

The UK Department for Rural Affairs and the UK Department for International Development have set up a Sustainable International Fisheries Team to coordinate these initiatives. The UK is also funding a network to monitor IUU fishing, to raise awareness of and combat IUU fishing in sub-Saharan Africa.

David Agnew
Department of Biology, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London, UK
d.agnew@mrag.co.uk

See also

Closing the net: Stopping illegal fishing on the high seas, final report of the Ministerially-led Task Force on IUU fishing on the High Seas, March 2006 (PDF)
www.high-seas.org/docs/HSTFfinal/HSTFFINAL_web.pdf

Review of Impacts of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing on Developing Countries, Marine Resources Assessment Group: London, 2005 (PDF)
www.high-seas.org/docs/IUU_DFID_Final_report_MRAG_2005.pdf

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