Rom criminal syndicates
advantage of the trafficked persons’ desperate need of income, and engage in long and neverending fishing sprees, hundreds of kilometres away from their homes. Apart from that, IUU fishing operators act with disregard to maritime safety and labour standards, putting at risk the trafficked crew members which are being exploited in abysmal living circumstances.
Transnational criminal groups, together with the trading in highvalue marine living resources they catch through IUU fishing activities, are involved in the trafficking of illicit narcotic substances. Fishing vessels are frequently used in cocaine trafficking, where large fishing vessels operate as mother-ships and smaller, and faster, boats traffic drugs to the land. In 2009, Mexican authorities found cocaine hidden in frozen shark carcasses on board a fishing vessel being used for the illicit trafficking of narcotic substances. Later that year, a 42-meter fishing vessel in the Caribbean was found carrying over 5,000 kilograms of cocaine, worth over 250 million euro, stored under concrete flooring.
Challenges
The transnational element leads to challenges to effectively combat IUU fishing on a global perspective. The involvement of different jurisdictions and various national agencies may lead to ineffective enforcement of IUU fishing crimes, whereby fisheries offences may fall between jurisdictional and enforcement gaps because no state or national agency would take the first step to investigate and, hopefully proceed to prosecuting criminals. The global extent of crime is evidenced by IUU fishing operations that hop between jurisdictions, complicating effective enforcement, especially when cooperation between the states involved is not established. This can be evidenced in numerous cases, such as the F/V Thunder incident in 2015. The F/V Thunder fishing vessel was registered in Nigeria, and although being authorised to fish in Nigeria’s territorial waters, was actually fishing illegally outside these territorial waters and in the Southern Ocean conservation area (CCAMLR area). A chase of 110 days, led by the NGO ‘Sea Shepherd’, started from Antarctica and reached West Africa, demonstrating the transnational element of IUU fishing and the need for international cooperation through timely investigations and information sharing.
Changes in vessel colour and name, reflagging and use of financial methods that obscure the beneficial owner of IUU fishing vessel, further complicate legal investigations and prosecution. Re-flagging, vessel modification and name changing disguise movement of IUU fishing vessels, dodging regulations and monitoring, making it more difficult to follow fishing activities. Such modus operandi were evident by the vessel registered as IMO 8713392 (named Berber and Viking, amongst others), a vessel operating in the Southern Ocean, which changed its name over fifteen times and flew multiple ‘flags of convenience’.
The need for coordinated international efforts
My M.A. in Ocean Governance thesis, sponsored by the International Ocean Institute, based in Malta, evaluated the current legal and enforcement frameworks with regards to the illicit fishing activities by transnational organised crime.
The international community must seek to cooperate in the combat against Transnational Organised Crime in fisheries, by implementing versatile and cross-border activities. Apart from ensuring inter-agency cooperation at a domestic level, States should ensure that they cooperate with other states in international criminal investigations on acts of IUU fishing. The international community is aware of the complex and cross-disciplinary nature of transnational organised crime in IUU fishing and acknowledges the need to expand from the normative fisheries management approaches to task teams made up of different agencies at both domestic and international levels. Investigative cooperation can be carried out either through dialogue between criminal investigation agencies of different States or through the mechanisms of the International Police Organisation (INTERPOL). Regional mechanisms should be constructed through international dialogue to identify specific fishing operations within regional areas and perpetrate.
Cooperation should also feature through the sharing of information and intelligence between states. The sharing of information within the international community is not an easy feat and the international community is seeking to facilitate the fluidity of such flow. The collection of documentation throughout the whole value chain, such as VMS-data, log-book, catch certification and licensing is an essential primary step in the gathering of important information. States should then ensure that such information is shared with other States which concurrently investigate criminal activity. A successful investigation which was achieved by persistent international cooperation through information sharing is the ‘United States v. Bengis’ case, where cooperation between the United States and South Africa led to the prosecution of transnational organised criminals. Working groups should aim at gathering intelligence on transnational organised criminal networks, so as to find weaknesses and evaluate functional notes within the network, together with its ownership.
This is a plea for all countries to discuss further how to enhance collaboration between them to strengthen the grip over the fishing activities of transnational organised criminals, which are leaving a devastating impact on our ocean. The ‘Our Ocean’ conference in Malta serve as a platform for discussion on concrete collaborative actions on an international setting, whereby countries would collaborate in information and intelligence sharing to establish functional nodes of known links within transnational organised criminal networks. This would also include the development of resources, knowledge and capacity building, and the establishing of effective monitoring and enforcement abilities within the international community through sharing between countries. The active participation of countries in different related international fora, such as regional fisheries organisations, FAO and INTERPOL, would create further platforms for cooperation in the international combat against transnational organised crime. I augur Commissioner Karmenu Vella, the European Commission, and all countries and international organisations that will be participating in ‘Our Ocean’ to reach commitments that will be translated in concrete actions in this regard and in other maritime sectors.
Thomas Bajada has a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Biology & Chemistry and is currently reading for an M.A. in Ocean Governance