Fishing For Data The Role Of Private Data Platforms In Addressing Illegal Unreported And Unregulated Fishing And Overfishing

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act (MSRA) was adopted by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by the U.S. President in January 2007. This Act contains a number of new provisions that will significantly shape the focus of fisheries management in the coming years. Importantly, the MSRA pays an unprecedented level of attention to international fisheries. The overarching approach is a call for the Secretary of Commerce to work multilaterally through various fora, such as Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs), to address illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

This book examines the global, local, and specific environmental factors that facilitate illegal fishing and proposes effective ways to reduce the opportunities and incentives that threaten the existence of the world's fish. Humans are deeply dependent on fishing—globally, fish comprise 15 percent of the protein intake for approximately 3 billion people, and 8 percent of the global population depends on the fishing industry as their livelihood. The global fishing industry is plagued by illegal fishing, however, and many highly commercial species, such as cod, tuna, orange roughy, and swordfish, are extremely vulnerable. Through criminological analysis, The Last Fish Swimming emphasizes the importance of looking at specific environmental factors that make illegal fishing possible. It examines such factors as proximity to known ports where illegally caught fish can be landed without inspection (i.e., ports of convenience), fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance efforts, formal surveillance, and resource attractiveness in 53 countries that altogether represent 96 percent of the world's fish catch. The book calls upon the global community to address the illegal depletion of the world's fish stock and other similar threats to the world's food supply and natural environment in order to ensure the sustainability of the planet's fish and continuation of the legal fishing industry for generations to come.

On June 17, 2014, the White House released a Presidential Memorandum entitled "Establishing a Comprehensive Framework to Combat Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Seafood Fraud." Among other actions, the Memorandum established a Presidential Task Force on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Seafood Fraud. The Task Force was directed to report to the President "recommendations for the implementation of a comprehensive framework of integrated programs to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and seafood fraud that emphasizes areas of greatest need." Those recommendations were provided to the President on December 18, 2014. There are 15 recommendations, which are broad in scope and call on agencies to take concrete and specific actions to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and seafood fraud throughout the seafood supply chain. This plan articulates the aggressive steps that federal agencies will take both domestically and internationally to implement the recommendations the Task Force made in December 2014. The plan identifies actions that will strengthen enforcement, create and expand partnerships with state and local governments, industry, and non-governmental organizations, and create a risk-based traceability program to track seafood from harvest to entry into U.S. commerce. The plan also highlights ways in which the United States will work with our foreign partners to strengthen international governance, enhance cooperation, and build capacity to combat IUU fishing and seafood fraud. This book addresses the recommendations made by the Task Force.

The IOPA-IUU is a voluntary instrument that applies to all States and entities and to all fishers. Following the IPOA's introduction, the nature and scope of IUU fishing is addressed. This is followed by the IPOA's objective and principles and the implementation of measures to prevent, deter and eliminate IUU fishing. These measures focus on all State responsibilities, flag State responsibilities, coastal State measures, port State measures, internationally agreed market-related measures, research and regional fisheries management organizations. Special requirements of developing countries are then considered, followed by reporting requirements and the role of FAO.

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing threatens the viability of high seas living resources. This book details the efforts of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources Commission and the Australian government to adopt complementary measures to deter IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean. It describes how these various measures have proven effective in deterring IUU operators.

Fishing activity detection is important for fishery management to maintain abundant oceans. The rising demand for fish and advanced fishing technologies has led to overfishing, species endangerment and marine habitat destruction. Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) is one example of an important ecological and economic issue that requires the understanding of fishing behavior of ships. Our proposed approach to detecting fishing activities uses Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) on Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. We generate features from selected attributes and combine different features based on their relationships and dependencies. We present three experiments on trawlers and longliners respectively as well as comparisons between CRFs and methods such as Autoencoder and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to demonstrate the stability and effectiveness of the CRF models. Furthermore, we develop a geo-visualization with interaction and animation of these AIS data and our experimental results.

How can individual countries in seafood supply chains maximize effectiveness of catch documentation schemes? This study suggests that monitoring is key in flag, coastal and end-market states, whereas country-level traceability is critical in port and processing states.

A Catch Documentation Scheme helps determine whether fish originate from catches that comply with applicable national, regional and international conservation and management measures. These Guidelines were elaborated in response to concerns expressed over the continued threat to marine habitats represented by illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, and the negative impact it has on food security, particularly in developing regions.