Reducing Illegal Fishing through Monitoring

Crab fishermen off the California coast, on Nov. 15, 2019. (Credit: Lance Cheung / USDA via Flickr Public Domain)

Sustainable fisheries management and utilization are an essential part of preserving these resources for the future. One of the leading fights on this front is tackling illegal fishing activities at sea. Overfishing, destructive equipment, falsifying catch records, unlawful killing of bycatch, and other unsustainable practices are damaging marine fisheries across the world.

Impacts of these practices can range from population declines of species to total extinction. While the implementation of fishing regulations is standard across the world, monitoring of practices may be limited.

A 2023 article published in Frontiers highlights emerging monitoring technologies that can help reduce illegal fishing activities, thus improving the sustainability of the industry. Technologies include environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis, vessel monitoring systems (VMS), automatic identification systems (AIS), and remote electronic monitoring (REM).

Stopping Illegal Fishing with Emerging Technologies

In terms of molecular genetic tools, DNA barcoding is a widely adopted approach to minimize fraudulent fish sales. However, since barcoding requires a direct, individual sample of fish tissues, the emergence of eDNA allows for the environment to be sampled instead of individual fish.

The eDNA analyses can help managers determine abundances of populations and help modify existing regulations and policies—such insights are essential to both conservation and sustainable exploitation.

Similarly, understanding and monitoring angling behaviors is an important part of managing fisheries and stopping illicit fishing practices. Vessel monitoring technologies like VMS, AIS, and REM have been implemented to varying degrees on fishing vessels across the world.

According to the article, “VMS are designed to automatically acquire and transmit the position, speed and heading of the vessel,” reporting behaviors at sea to regulatory agencies. Attempts to interrupt the VMS signal may result in investigations to ensure that the vessel is in compliance with all fishing regulations.

Many states also require an electronic logbook that pairs with VMS data and details even more specifics about the fishing trip, like start, end, capture species, bycatch, and volume of fish on the vessel at different times. Similar to VMS, AIS—utilized often as a collision avoidance system—the data is collected continuously and transmitted over an open broadcast format.

Finally, the article highlights REM as a technology of interest, explaining that “REM consists of a complete VMS, including CCTVs, sensors on winches, conveyors, and freezers.” The goal of REMs is to fill in some of the gaps left by VMS and AIS, which cannot fully report on the specifics of catches.

Barriers to Implementation

While growing in popularity, the larger and more expensive systems are difficult to implement on a large scale, particularly in smaller fisheries where the cost of implementing such measures may be a barrier.

Additionally, the article notes privacy concerns and reservations about monitoring from anglers can prevent wide-scale adoption of these technologies. However, the article notes the potential of such technologies to provide important management data to officials and participate in co-management of the fishing industry.

Despite the barriers, implementation of emerging tracing technology is an important step toward ensuring the world’s fisheries survive into the future.