August 23, 2019 — A 50-year-old Coast Guard cutter is on the front line against illegal fishing on the high seas of the North Pacific, part of a growing international fight.
The cooperative effort targets uncontrolled distant-water fishing vessels, and tracks the business networks of carrier ships and fuel bunkering tankers that support them. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, or IUU, operates outside the territorial waters jurisdiction of coastal nations.
But not beyond the reach of international law and cooperative regulation by fishing nations. In the North Pacific, that is what the North Pacific Fisheries Commission does.
The youngest of world’s ocean-spanning management groups, the NPFC only got started in 2015. It includes representation from Canada, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Chinese Taipei, the United States of America, and Vanuatu.