18 December 2012
Results Available from Pacific Efforts Against Illegal Fishing
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Regional efforts in the Pacific to curb illegal tuna fishing are being bolstered by improved data systems, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) reports, with the SPC and FFA using the results of surveillance operation Kurukuru 2012 to inform the development of an improved information management and data screening system for reporting and recording fishing activities.

SPCDecember 2012: The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) has released the results of a two-week surveillance operation, named “Kurukuru 2012,” aimed at detecting illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities in the Pacific.

According to SPC, Kurukuru 2012 is the region’s biggest ever surveillance operation. It was headquartered in the Solomon Islands at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Fisheries Agency (FFA) Regional Fisheries Surveillance Centre, and surveyed roughly 30 million square kilometers (km2). The operation found 27 infringements in November 2012, and confirmed the need for data collection in efforts to curtail illegal tuna fishing.

The operation informed early stages of the Development of Tuna Fisheries in the Pacific African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries (DEVFISH2), a project funded by the EU to improve information management and data analysis to deter illegal fishing.

The future database management system will provide tools to determine the exact losses of earnings from underreported and misreported catch sizes, and assist authorities to identify inconsistencies between fishing vessel log books and other sources of data on catches. [SPC Press Release]

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