Illegal Fishing: Another Kind of Piracy on the High Seas

Piracy garnered international attention in recent years, but there's another kind of ocean-based plundering that goes largely unnoticed—illegal fishing. An international team of researchers tracked port activity over the last six years. The insanely high number of shady fish deals going on in ports across the globe make Mexico City drug warehouses look like Disneyland. Scientists wrote in Science that up to 26 million tons of fish worth an estimated $23 billion are landed illegally every year.

Vessels that engage in Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU) are a huge blight on ocean systems. Already, 80 percent of the world's fish stocks are fully or overexploited. Add pollution and acidification and warming water temperatures brought on by climate change and it's clear that the world's seas are really in a pickle.

If enacted, new regulations might help improve the situation. About six months ago, the UN approved a Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), which would require ports to prohibit vessels engaged in IUU from docking. Under the UN's current Convention on the Law of the Sea, vessels' activities are the sole responsibility of their "flag states," or nations where ships are registered.

Fifteen nations signed onto the PSMA so far, but the agreement requires 25 participating nations before it can be ratified. Still, even if the new regulations go into effect, it's unclear whether they'll be able to seriously cut back on illegal fishing.

Scientists' research found that IUU continues because of three major shortcomings. For one, there's simply not enough traceable information on individual vessels. Researchers could only successfully track about one-third of those vessels registered as IUU offenders. Second, only about one-quarter of port states actually enforce regulations. And finally, it's not hard for fishermen to discover which ports observe strict regulations and which are more lax. IUU-listed ships simply dock in lax ports. The study's co-author, Kristin von Kistowski of Pew Environment Group, told the BBC that even if the legally binding PSMA goes into effect, it does not mean it will be ratified by all countries, so there could still be loopholes for IUU vessels.

Kistowski and other researchers, who will present their findings at next week's review conference of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, say that it's imperative to adopt strict, international regulations on IUU fishing in order to conserve the world's fish populations. "This worldwide problem of IUU fishing will need to have a system with greater transparency, accountability and global reach in order to be effective," Kistowski told the BBC.

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