Food Security, Environment Prompt A Harder Look at Fishing Practices

A Vietnamese fishing boat (above) blasted by the Indonesian navy due to illegal fishing activities in the South China Sea earlier this month. Last Sunday, Indonesia sank two more vessels, both from Papua New Guinea. -- PHOTO: AFP 

Jakarta's crackdown, which includes setting up a fish theft eradication force, is a long delayed response to years of illegal fishing in its waters. Around 5,000 vessels - mostly from Thailand, Vietnam, China, Malaysia and the Philippines - fish illegally in Indonesian waters. The Indonesian government says this causes annual losses of more than US$20 billion. 

Globally, competition for dwindling fish stocks is intensifying, and so is the potential for flash points at sea, analysts say. 

The global fish catch is smaller today than it was in the 1990s, and various studies show that stocks of major commercial species have plunged. A 2013 paper by University of British Columbia researchers concluded that about 58 per cent of the world's fish stocks have collapsed or are over-exploited. 

Soon after the sinking of the Vietnamese trawlers on December 5, off the remote Anambas Islands in the South China Sea, the authorities arrested 22 Chinese ships for fishing illegally, according to reports. None of the Chinese vessels has been sunk yet.
The two trawlers flying Papua New Guinea flags were sunk last Sunday in Ambon Bay in the eastern Maluku islands. Tempo magazine said the vessels had 72 Thai and Cambodian crew members as well as seven Indonesians on board. 

Indonesian president Joko Widodo's "shock therapy" has had an immediate effect.
The day after two Thai ships were chased and seized among the Riau islands, less than a week after the Vietnamese trawlers were sunk, Praporn Ekuru, chairman of the Songkhla Fisheries Association in southern Thailand, warned Thai trawlers to avoid Indonesian waters. 

But he added: "Fishermen have to survive. We have to admit that there are almost no fish left in Thailand. Sometimes, they have to take the risk."

(Asia News Network)
(Straits Times - Paywall)