Crackdown on Patagonian toothfish poaching in the Southern Ocean
While the New Zealand navy is trying to stop three ships poaching Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish in the Southern Ocean, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is in hot pursuit of another.
The illegal fishing boats, believed to be carrying a catch worth $8 million on the black market in South-East Asia, are all flying flags of convenience to avoid prosecution.
All the ships have been given a purple notice by Interpol for illegal fishing, but finding and prosecuting the ships' owners is a difficult, if not impossible, task.
Fishing in the Southern Ocean is regulated bythe Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
CCAMLR sets the fishing quota limits for the Southern Ocean and has 25 member states, including Australia and New Zealand.
The reason illegal fishing boats fly flags of convenience is because if they are fishing from a boat that is not signed up to the CCAMLR agreement then the illegal fishing boat is simply fishing on the high seas and prosecution is almost impossible.
The only way to prosecute a boat for illegal fishing is to prove that its owner is from a country signed up to CCAMLR.
When HMNZS Wellington tracked down the Yongding, Kunlun and the Songhua, they were all flying the flag of Equatorial Guinea but New Zealand foreign minister Murray McCully was suspicious.
"In the past, two of these vessels have been linked to the Spanish-based syndicate, Vidal Armadores SA," he said.
"They have to take these boats somewhere, they have to get reprovisions somewhere.
"They have got to unload the fish somewhere, and we're going to track them down and we're going to take whatever action is open to us legally wherever they go."
If the illegal fishing vessels were owned by a Spanish company then the executive secretary of CCAMLR, Andrew Wright, said "it's left with the flagged state concerned and the CCAMLR member country concerned to pursue a prosecution for those vessels through their own domestic legislation".
The first illegal ship found this summer was a boat called Thunder, bearing the Nigerian flag.
It was a well-known repeat offender, and it seemed her days of illegal fishing were over in April last year when she was seized in Malaysia and the captain and crew fined $90,000.
But deputy director general of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency Vice Admiral Ahmad Puzi said the Thunder got to keep its illegal catch.
"What we charged them with is under a foreign fishing vessel through Malaysian fishery waters, then we have to return the fish to the captain." he said.
Tasmanian Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson said he wanted the Australian Navy to join the New Zealand navy in patrolling the Southern Ocean.
"We've obviously got a revolving door of illegal fishing going on in the Southern Ocean and the kind of fine that we're talking about here is really just a slap on the wrist," he said.
The federal parliamentary secretary with responsibility for fisheries, Senator Richard Colbeck, said it was not about sending patrol boats to the area, but rather working with countries in Asia to deny the illegal fishers access to ports.
"The best way to prevent people illegally accessing the fishery is to take away their market so they've got nowhere to sell the fish," he said.
