Blowing Up Illegal Fishing Boats Helps Indonesian Fishers

Blowing Up Illegal Fishing Boats Helps Indonesian Fishers

6 years ago
Anonymous $oIHRkISgaL

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blowing-up-illegal-fishing-boats-helps-indonesian-fishers/

Indonesia, one of the world’s leading producers of tuna, decided several years ago it had had enough of illegal foreign fishing boats entering its exclusive economic zone and taking an average of $4 billion a year in fisheries profits. In 2014 the Southeast Asian nation—a vast archipelago of more than 13,000 islands—imposed a one-year moratorium on fishing vessels built abroad, in order to evaluate their impact.

During the moratorium officials discovered boats disguising foreign ownership under local names, falsifying Indonesian fishing permits or using the same permit for multiple boats. This evidence augmented other reports of foreign vessels underreporting the sizes of their boats, avoiding taxes and intruding in waters reserved for local small-scale fishers.