House of Ocean is a not for profit organisation dedicated to promoting compliance with fisheries laws through the provision of training, advice, research and advocacy. We support Mission Ocean and the Global Ocean Commission’s Proposals and, in particular, we echo Proposal 4 on the subject of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
One of House of Ocean’s objects is to support industry actors to protect supply chains against IUU fishing products. In this respect, we advocate full traceability, recommend sourcing seafood from vessels that have been assigned an IMO number and that carry working transponders on board and fully support the Commission’s recommendation to make these compulsory.
We also support the Commission’s recommendation to ban transhipments at sea. We regularly engage in advocacy and dissemination work and have repeatedly denounced at sea transhipments as invisible, unregulated but convenient mechanisms to launder fish as well as to facilitate maritime crimes such as the trafficking of wildlife, drugs and weapons.
We are on course to petitioning the European Commission for a real time data-sharing facility that will allow access, cross-checking and analysis of key data so that IUU fish trade flows can be identified. This requires cooperation between governments, international organisations, industry and civil society and we will work toward supporting the emergence of mechanisms to bring these key actors together.
Finally, we recognise IUU fishing as a financially motivated activity. We support the creation of port and market measures to address the economic drivers that make fisheries illegality so lucrative and so damaging to legal operators. In this respect, we will continue to advocate for the coming into force of the PSMA in appropriate fora.
The Global Ocean Commission understands that the future of the high seas and of our civilisation are linked. With Mission Ocean, they call on us to look at the ocean with renewed hope so that, together, we learn to understand it and protect it as the keystone of our common heritage.
Setting IMO mandatory numbers for large fishing vessels, banning at-sea transshipment, ratifying and implementing international fisheries and labour treaties. Creating greater collaboration with industry and other stakeholders.
Illegal fishing severely undermines all existing conservation and management measures in place for fish stocks. It costs the global economy between US$10 and US$23.5 billion a year, and is largely carried out by vessels from a handful of countries that do not adhere to or comply with international regulations.
Poor countries, which do not have the capacity to monitor their waters and whose vital resources diminish because of illegal pillage, are the worst affected. Illegal fishing is also linked to other forms of criminality as fishing vessels can also be used for smuggling people, drugs and weapons. The illegality of the practice needs to be established, the likelihood of being caught and sanctioned needs to be increased, and illegally caught fish must be prevented from entering markets.
In order to combat and end illegal fishing, the Global Ocean Commission is calling for: