June 11, 2021 — Australian maritime operatives intercepted 19 Indonesian vessels in a two-week period in May through “Operation Jawline,” an operation coordinated by the Maritime Border Command (MBC) – a joint agency task force within the Australian Border Force (ABF) – with close involvement from the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA).
The vessels were all believed to be illegally fishing in Australia’s Northern waters.
June 10, 2021 — The U.S. government blocked imports of seafood Friday from the entire fleet of a Chinese company that authorities say forced crew members to work in slave-like conditions that led to the deaths of several Indonesian fishermen last year.
Customs and Border Protection said it will place an immediate hold on any imports linked to the more than 30 vessels operated by Dalian Ocean Fishing, under a U.S. law that bars goods suspected to have been produced with forced labor.
Imports from Dalian, which primarily fishes for high-grade tuna, have exceeded $20 million as recently as 2018. Amid financial troubles, and a greater focus on the Asian market, the shipments have dropped. CBP said the company shipped $1.8 million worth of cargo to the U.S. in 2019; nearly $321,000 in 2020; and $763,000 through April 30 of this year.
“We will not tolerate any amount derived from forced labor,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters as he announced the measure.
CBP issued what is known as a withhold release order that halts shipments that have suspected links to forced labor, under a law that has been on the books for decades, ostensibly to protect U.S. producers from unfair competition.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Boston Herald
June 8, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
This past weekend marked the fourth observance of the International Day for the Fight Against Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing. This day was declared by the United Nations to raise awareness about IUU fishing and its threat to the sustainability of the world’s ocean resources. NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement plays a pivotal role in tackling IUU fishing every day.
Combating IUU fishing is a top priority for the United States. IUU fishing damages economies, threatens marine resources, and harms U.S. fishing fleets and consumers. Through partnerships and collaborative efforts, we address IUU fishing by:
Training Inspectors, Increasing Compliance
NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement has helped countries enhance their fisheries enforcement capacities to combat IUU fishing for more than a decade.
Illegal fishers count on poor communication among relevant authorities and seek to take advantage of gaps in interagency coordination. They rely on global enforcement entities to not share information with one another—allowing them to continue to carry out their lucrative behavior.
To address this problem, the Port State Measures Agreement was created. It is the first binding international agreement specifically designed to target IUU fishing and is an important tool for us. Currently, there are 69 parties to the Agreement, covering 93 countries and more than half of the world’s coastal nations.
The Agreement works to prevent vessels carrying IUU fish and fish products from landing their catch at ports around the world. It sets minimum standards for:
We have developed domestic and international Port State Measures Inspector Training Programs that provide technical assistance to global partners. These trainings—the first of their kind—help reduce the amount of IUU fish and fish products being landed and exported from nations around the world. They focus on the operational implementation of the Agreement to help global partners better detect and intercept IUU fish and fish products before they enter global commerce.
Building partnerships to combat IUU fishing is a top priority. It is critically important to the success of the Agreement that all parties have the support and tools needed to implement its provisions. We continue to help partners with legislative framework and policy support, in addition to fisheries inspector and officer training. These trainings enhance partners’ monitoring, control, and surveillance systems to combat IUU fishing and the trade in IUU fish products. They also help implement the operational requirements of the Agreement and promote increased cooperation and information sharing between interagency partners.
Training and Technical Assistance Highlights
NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement supports partners across the Asia-Pacific region and is expanding into Latin America and the Caribbean. This expansion follows the recent successes of our Inspector Training in Lima, Peru in January 2020, which brought together participants from Ecuador and Peru.
In Southeast Asia, we conducted our first Inspector Training-of-Trainers Workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia in fall 2019. We also co-facilitated a regional Port State Measures Inspector Training workshop for the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center with support from the USAID Regional Development Mission for Asia. In total, nine SEAFDEC members participated—Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—as well as India and Sri Lanka. In addition, we provided technical support to Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
We conducted joint monitoring, control, and surveillance assessments in The Bahamas, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, in 2019 and 2020. These assessments were supported through a project with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. We have since held multiple follow-up technical exchanges.
Lastly, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have worked hard to pivot capacity-building efforts to a virtual landscape. In the near future, we will launch the first virtual edition of the Training Program. Through this innovative programming, we continue the fight against IUU fishing at home and abroad.
June 7, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Every day, the United States works with our partners across the world to confront illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. IUU fishing activities hurt law-abiding U.S. fishermen and their consumers, damage economies of developing coastal nations, and threaten marine resources. The global economic impact resulting from these activities is in the billions, or even tens of billions, of dollars each year. Furthermore, IUU fishing is sometimes linked to criminal activity, such as human trafficking, including forced labor, drug trafficking, smuggling, and other forms of transnational crime. Wherever it occurs, IUU fishing undermines global maritime rules-based order, which has been essential to global prosperity and development for the last 70 years.
June 5 marks the annual United Nations International Day for the Fight Against IUU Fishing. This day raises awareness of the impact of IUU fishing as one of the greatest threats to the sustainability of the world’s ocean resources. IUU fishing refers not only to illegal fishing activities, but also the often overlooked, but equally important U’s in IUU fishing activities. Unreported and unregulated fishing refers to fishing activities that are not reported, insufficiently regulated, or are misreported to relevant authorities. This hinders the ability for scientists to fully assess the health of fish stocks and endangers our food security.
Tackling all these issues requires particular, concerted action by different agencies and different operational and legal frameworks. It also includes a large net of coordination among regional fisheries management organizations, foreign governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. NOAA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Department of State recently began implementing a law which advances a “whole-of-government” strategy to fight IUU fishing.
The Maritime Security and Fisheries Enforcement Act (SAFE) Act was passed in December 2019. It directed twenty-one federal agencies to establish a central forum to coordinate and strengthen their efforts—the U.S. Interagency Working Group on IUU Fishing. This Working Group set up mechanisms for agencies to:
During its first year, member agencies developed an initial set of priorities and activities that included creating specific sub-working groups to collaborate on issues such as maritime intelligence, public-private partnerships, and human trafficking. The Working Group continues to conduct a series of outreach engagements with industry and the private sector. Moving forward, the Working Group will engage with various public and private stakeholders on building coordinated approaches in the priority regions where the Working Group has determined that IUU fishing issues are prevalent.
Combating IUU fishing is a top priority for the United States, and communication, collaboration and strategic coordination will be key in bringing about tangible results. The efforts of the Interagency Working Group now sit at the heart of our government’s coordination on tackling IUU fishing practices and setting the conditions where IUU fishing is neither accepted nor commonplace in the future. We are committed to continue working together on best practices and sharing results across agencies and partnerships to encourage their further adaptation and replication.
June 4, 2021 — A South Atlantic shortfin squid fishery is dominated by distant-water fleets off Argentina, primarily Chinese vessels that account for an estimated 69 percent of fishing activity, according to a new report by the environmental group Oceana.
From Jan. 1, 2018 to April 25, 2021, the group documented more than 800 foreign-flag vessels logging more than 900,000 hours of apparent fishing activity, based on analysis of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data.
That analysis also showed vessels regularly “went dark” – apparently turning off their AIS transponders – effectively dropping out of sight for 600,000 hours in all. Some 66 percent of those outages involved Chinese vessels, raising the possibility of masked illegal fishing, such as intruding into Argentina’s exclusive economic zone, according to Oceana researchers.
June 4, 2021 — U.S. Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) on May 11 introduced a bipartisan bill to end foreign Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing, which he says is negatively impacting America’s fisheries, particularly in his home state of Louisiana.
“Generations of Louisiana’s fishing families have made our state one of the top seafood producers in the country. The combination of great chefs and our seafood has resulted in Louisiana being a foodie destination,” Rep. Graves said. “However, hurricanes, government regulations, the pandemic and unfair competition from foreign fishing fleets are threatening the future of these hard-working men and women and threatening the sustainability of fisheries around the globe.
“It has evolved from an environmental issue to an economic issue to a national security issue,” he said.
The Illegal Fishing and Forced Labor Prevention Act, H.R. 3075, which Rep. Graves introduced with bill sponsor U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), would establish monitoring and detection programs to identify and prevent IUU fisheries from unfair competition with United States domestic fishing boats, according to a bill summary provided by Rep. Graves’ office.
June 4, 2021 — U.S. sanctions filed last week against a Chinese distant-water fishing firm for alleged forced labor abuses amount to “American slander,” according to a Chinese state media outlet.
The China Youth Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party Youth League, has sought to link the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s sanctioning of the Dalian Ocean Fishing Co. to other Western claims of human rights abuses as part of a coordinated effort to “tarnish” China.
June 3, 2021 — Greenpeace Southeast Asia is claiming that 20 Indonesian manning agencies and 26 fishing firms from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Cote d’Ivoire, and Nauru are allegedly involved in forced labor practices against Indonesian migrant fishers.
The allegations were presented by the organization in a report released 31 May, “Forced Labour at Sea: The Case of Indonesian Migrant Fishers,” released in partnership with Indonesian migrant workers union Serikat Buruh Migran Indonesia (SBMI).
June 2, 2021 — Giant distant-water fishing fleets, primarily from China, are switching off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in a possibly illegal hunt for squid and other lucrative species on the very edge of Argentina’s extensive fishing grounds, according to a new study by Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.
Every year, vessels crowd together along the limits of Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to take advantage of the lucrative fishing grounds.
By monitoring the ships’ tracking beacons between January 2018 and April 2021, Oceana found that more than 800 vessels apparently conducted nearly 900,000 hours of fishing within 20 nautical miles of the invisible border between Argentina’s national waters and the high seas.
“During this three-and-a-half-year period, there were over 6,000 instances in which these fishing vessels appeared to go ‘dark’ by potentially disabling their electronic tracking devices, known as Automatic Identification Systems (AIS),” says the report, published on Wednesday, titled, Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: Vanishing Vessels Along Argentina’s Waters.
In all, these vessels were “hidden” for over 600,000 hours during which Oceana suspects they crossed over into Argentina’s territorial waters for illegal fishing.
“It’s very suspicious that they have their AIS turned off for such a large proportion of the time they are out fishing,” said Marla Valentine, an ecologist at Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.
June 1, 2021 — A Chinese spokesperson on Monday, 31 May, rejected American claims that a Chinese fishing company has committed forced labor violations, calling the claims “totally unfounded.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on Friday, 28 May, that Customs and Border Protection officials had issued an order against the Dalian Ocean Fishing Company, Ltd. That order came after agency officials said they identified all 11 signs of forced labor during an investigation. Those signs included isolating workers, withholding wages, using intimidation, and retaining workers’ identification documents.