It is widely recognized within the international fisheries management arena that IUU fishing can jeopardize and sometimes undermine management and conservation efforts for sustainable fisheries. Raising concerns regarding IUU fishing activities within many regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs) and the recognition of the inability of existing international instruments to effectively address illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing led to the development of an FAO International Plan of Action (IPOA) to prevent, deter, and eliminate IUU fishing in 2001. The IPOA-IUU encourages states and RFMOs to use all available measures in accordance with international law to combat IUU fishing, including port state measures, coastal state measures, market-related measures, national legislation, sanctions, economic incentives, education, monitoring, control, and surveillance (MCS) systems, and internationally agreed market-related measures. In addition, the recently established Monitoring, Control, and Surveillance Network (MCS Network), is a significant contribution to global efforts to combat IUU fishing as nations voluntarily join their resources to increase their effectiveness in enforcing conservation measures designed to protect world fisheries and ecosystems.
- FAO
International Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported
and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing
- U.S. National Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing
- International Monitoring, Control and
Surveillance (MCS) Network for Fisheries Related Activities
IUU Fishing Vessel Lists
As a tool to combat IUU fishing activities, an increasing number of regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) have adopted procedures for listing vessels that have engaged in IUU fishing. These lists have been created to attach certain penalties to vessels included on them, including restriction of port access or unloading prohibitions. Some of these lists, like the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) IUU Vessel List, are intended to include only fishing vessels. Others, like the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO's) IUU List, can include transport vessels as well.
NOAA Fisheries, on behalf of the U.S. Government, is designing a system that will implement U.S. obligations to apply these RFMO decisions to vessels that have been included on IUU vessel lists. In the meantime, the U.S. industry should be aware that the RFMOs identified below have created IUU vessel lists; some countries are already restricting port access, among other things, to listed vessels.
International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), and Indian Ocean Tuna Commission: (IOTC): http://www.tuna-org.org/vesselneg.htm
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO): www.nafo.int
Northeast Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC): www.neafc.org
Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC): www.wcpfc.int
