Illegal fishing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As illegal fishing and illegal fishing (official term in the EU ( English ): illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing , illegal, undocumented and unregulated 'short IUU fishing ) is in the fishing referred fishing by those vessels and crews, the is operated commercially without the required license, exceeds the fishing quota granted in the license or for which catches are not stated or are incorrectly stated.

The crews and their boats are often referred to as pirate fishermen in the media , a term that is used as a catchphrase, especially by environmental organizations such as Greenpeace . In contrast to deep-sea fishing , illegal fishing in inland fishing is much less pronounced. When fishing hobby of vernacular speaks of Black fish or fish species .

According to estimates by the World Food Organization , up to 20 percent of the fish traded internationally comes from illegal fishing.

background

To avoid overfishing in their Exclusive Economic Zones (200-mile zone), most states with coastal waters set fishing quotas and assign a share of this quota to individual applicants by means of a license . Fishing outside the Exclusive Economic Zones is regulated by international agreements.

Problem

The pirate fishermen circumvent international fishing agreements by registering their fishing vessels in countries with flags of convenience or by sailing without a flag, country code or name. They own industrial fishing vessels and prefer to hunt where controls are the exception, for example in the Southern Ocean or off West Africa, where governments do not have the means to adequately control their coastal waters.

The shipowners are mainly located in Europe, Japan , the People's Republic of China and the USA . Greenpeace estimates that around 1200 industrial fishing vehicles are involved in illegal fishing.

A study published in Science Advances in 2020 based on Sea Around Us (a database and organization of the University of British Columbia with the same name ) came to the conclusion that between 7.7 and 14 million tons of fish are removed from the sea worldwide every year without reporting this. Asia, Africa and South America are particularly affected. According to the study, this causes damage of 26 to 50 billion dollars annually to legal fishing. The economic losses, measured at national prices, are estimated to be between 7.6 and 13.9 billion dollars per year for Africa; for Asia between $ 10.3 billion and $ 20.3 billion. For Germany, illegal fishing results in an annual gross income loss of 4.5 to 7.3 million dollars.

According to a Greenpeace -Recherche there were 416 worldwide ships in Umladeaktionen at sea, known in the years 2017-2020 Transshipment could mix with legal prisoner, illegal caught fish. Transshipment saves fishermen long journeys into port and, according to marine protection organizations, is a popular method of mixing illegal fish catches with legal ones. According to the research, a total of 94 operating companies were identified whose ships use such illegal practices, which Greenpeace believes it can recognize through the Automatic Identification System . The operating companies of the suspected ships are mainly based in countries from Russia , China , Japan , South Korea , Taiwan , Hong Kong , Norway , Greece and the Netherlands . The ships themselves mostly sail under the Panamanian flag .

Combat

Illegal fishing is seen as a global problem affecting fishing areas with weak national or international controls. These include in particular West African countries, where, according to estimates by nature and environmentalists, every third fish is of illegal origin. Illegal fishing is classified as a threat to food security and marine ecosystems. International bodies such as the Group of Eight , Interpol and the United Nations Environment Program have recognized illegal fishing as an environmental crime . The European Union has passed a regulation to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

In 2011, the EU and the US signed an agreement to combat illegal fishing.

An investigation of albatrosses equipped with transmitters showed that 37 percent of all ships made themselves invisible in international waters. In zones in which a license is required for fishing, ships sometimes left their Automatic Identification System switched off for weeks.

hazards

Violations of catch quotas  lead to

  • Overfishing (main problem)
  • a drop in prices due to oversupply on the fish market and thus economic losses for the licensed fishermen who adhere to their quotas
  • long term to ruin the fishing industry in one area or worldwide
  • locally to train piracy in the affected areas

politics

Since the fall of the Somali government in 1991 , the territorial waters off Somalia are no longer monitored. Since then, foreign fishing trawlers , especially from the EU , Russia and Asia, have been fishing in these waters illegally. The intruders drove away the boats of local fishermen, shot their occupants with water cannons, cut their nets and in doing so accepted the loss of human life themselves. As reported by the East African Seafarers' Assistance Program (SAP), which mediates most of the ship hijackings off the Somali coast, illegal fishing is the root cause of piracy , as local fishermen initially armed themselves and tried to target foreign pirate fishermen to evict. After maritime militias first caught trawlers fishing illegally and levied “license payments” for their illegal fishing, merchant ships were later hijacked. In the meantime, the illegal fishermen off Somalia are benefiting from the EU's Atalanta operation to protect seafaring off Somalia.

Documentation

  • Andreas Orth: Duel in the North Sea. The hunt for pirate fishermen. Documentation, WDR, 2006.
  • Jutta Pinzler, Mieke Otte: Until the last catch. The fish business. Documentation, NDR, 2014

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e Stefan Schultz, DER SPIEGEL: Illegal fishing: data analysis shows controversial reloading maneuvers on the high seas - DER SPIEGEL - Economy. Retrieved February 28, 2020 .
  2. Greenpeace warning: Chinese fish illegally off Africa. In: Spiegel Online. May 20, 2015, accessed June 30, 2016 .
  3. a b c d e DER SPIEGEL: Illegal fishing leads to billions in losses - DER SPIEGEL - Wirtschaft. Retrieved February 27, 2020 .
  4. ^ Illegal fishing. WWF Germany , February 2, 2016, accessed June 30, 2016 .
  5. a b Issue Paper: The Progress in the Fight Against Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (IUU). (PDF) May 26, 2016, p. 2 , accessed June 30, 2016 .
  6. Banks, D., Davies, C., Gosling, J., Newman, J., Rice, M., Wadley, J., Walravens, F. (2008) Environmental Crime. A threat to our future. Environmental Investigation Agency ( pdf ).
  7. Regulation (EC) No. 1005/2008 of the Council of 29 September 2008 on a community system for the prevention, control and suppression of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, amending Regulation (EEC) No. 2847/93, (EC ) No. 1936/2001 and (EC) No. 601/2004 and for the repeal of Regulations (EC) No. 1093/94 and (EC) No. 1447/1999 in the consolidated version of March 9, 2011
  8. Agreement: EU and USA sign a pact against illegal fishing. In: Spiegel Online. September 7, 2011, accessed June 30, 2016 .
  9. ^ Henri Weimerskirch, Julien Collet, Alexandre Corbeau, Adrien Pajot, Floran Hoarau, Cédric Marteau, Dominique Filippi, Samantha C. Patrick: Ocean sentinel albatrosses locate illegal vessels and provide the first estimate of the extent of nondeclared fishing . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 117 , no. 6 , 2020, p. 3006-3014 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1915499117 .
  10. Daniela Gschweng: How albatrosses can track down illegal fishermen. Infosperber , March 27, 2020, accessed on March 29, 2020 .
  11. ↑ The world's oceans: fish stocks have halved within 40 years. In: Spiegel Online. September 16, 2015, accessed June 30, 2016 .
  12. Illegal fishing benefits from EU intervention in the Horn of Africa in the daily newspaper Die Presse of November 21, 2008.
  13. Annette Weber: Wars without borders and the "successful failure" of the states in the Horn of Africa (PDF; 472 kB), SWP Study 2008 / S 26, September 2008, 25 pages.

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