During two months of joint surveillance with enforcement officials from two countries we've patrolled over 30,000 square miles of ocean. In that time we’ve inspected 8 suspicious fishing vessels, found a warehouse full of de-finned shark carcases and spent a night fishing on a Longliner .
The situation in the Pacific is different to what we'd been expecting. The pirate fishing here is much more subtle than in West Africa. There are no rusting unlicensed vessels with demoralised crews fishing surreptitiously. Instead, each of the vessels we’ve inspected has been in good condition, the crew well fed and in good spirits. Nonetheless they are pirates, operating in a grey area between the legal loopholes and lax governance.
