Illegal and unreported fishing “occurs on an industrial scale” around the world and often the culprit is China’s subsidized fishing fleet, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said today.

Speaking Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he added, “one in five fish” sold in international markets is caught illegally. The decline in fish populations due to climate change and overfishing is having a profound effect on the sources of protein in the food supplies of the poorest countries, the secretary said.

In his meetings with his counterparts in Oceania and other countries, Del Toro said that “violations of their exclusive economic zones are at the top of their concerns”, as is their need for better maritime knowledge of what happens in their waters to include minerals and energy prospecting.

Earlier, Monica Medina, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, said that sometimes when it comes to dealing with China and illegal fishing there is “a leveling off. from below “to solve the problem.

Coast Guard Commander Admiral Karl Schultz, speaking at the same forum, said the United States “can provide some leadership” to raise awareness of this awareness through hands-on training on the maritime law enforcement and information sharing with the navies and coasts of South America, Africa and the Pacific. guards.

As an example of the difficulty in tracking illegal fishing, Schultz noted that the automatic identification systems, or AIS, on board many of these vessels are disabled, so they are not easily traced. “If we’re chasing people who are spoofing AIS, I’m not sure we’re winning there.”

“Maybe we [the United States Coast Guard] Help put these arrangements together through the State Department’s demarches, he added.

“These kinds of arrangements did not exist before,” Medina said. “We’re just getting started [to move] on how to use »new technological tools with other nations in maritime law enforcement. “We need to make things better” inside and outside the US government and with the private sector on what can be done better collectively.

She saw the value of broadening the attention paid to this issue at the United Nations and before the International Maritime Organization. “We need to know where the fish are,” and these organizations can help track that as arctic waters warm and fish stocks deplete in the tropics.

Medina added that nations and organizations engaged in illegal fishing are closely monitoring these changes.

To convey how important illegal fishing is to the American public, Schultz said “we have to put a face” on the challenge that can be understood from the way supply chain disruptions are currently.

Del Toro said the exercises with other nations show how other nations can work with U.S. Maritime Services and U.S. allies and partners, such as Australia and New Zealand in Oceania, to strengthen their ability to protect their own territory. He and Schultz said Coast Guard law enforcement detachments aboard Navy ships could also provide a model for these countries to work together to monitor illegal activity beyond drug trafficking.

Schultz said the “lingering partnerships” are having an impact in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Oceania, – who share concerns about the future food supply and the history of the industry’s forced labor practices. fishing – as they did in anti-narcotics efforts in Latin America.

He added that the US Coast Guard was not interested in “being the fishing cops of the world.”

Schultz said the Coast Guard is “absolutely a key catalyst” when it works with the Navy to show its presence internationally and conduct operations other than purely military ones.

When asked by an audience member if it was possible to come to an agreement with China and Russia on these issues, Del Toro said, “we need to have a very open dialogue” with them on the issues. on which the three nations can agree.

“We cannot give up trying,” he added.

Related