Caught red-handed: daylight robbery on the high seas

Activists prevent four pirate fishing trawlers from leaving Rostock harbour. The ships were involved in the collapse of redfish stocks in the North Atlantic in 2005.

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Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a global problem that needs global solutions. While many states around the planet have paid attention to the issue on a national and regional level, they have not been able to solve the problem of a highly mobile global pirate fishing fleet ready to flout the laws and exploit its gaps whenever and wherever they see fit. Local and regional solutions are simply not sufficient if the international community is to deal effectively with fishing pirates, stealing marine life from honest fishermen, and future generations. This paper focusses on redfish, five IUU trawlers, the Irminger Sea and the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) -- to expose the daylight robbery taking place across our seas and to outline why regional management is not sufficient to deal with the challenges posed by pirate fishing.

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