CIL Research Associate Dita Liliansa’s blog entitled “Fishing and Fishing-Related Activities: A Deadly Mutualism in the IUU Fishing Chain” has been published by AsianSIL Voices – Asian Journal of International Law.

In her blog, she discusses the role of fisheries support vessels in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and associated crimes and whether they should play a more active role in addressing those issues.

Many fishing vessels could spend more than 500 days at sea without any return to port. Besides IUU fishing, other crimes are also thriving in such remote environments. One notable example is the prevalence of modern slavery at sea.

Such prolonged periods of fishing activity have been made possible by a network of fisheries support vessels supplying fuel, food, and even crews to fishing vessels.  In her blog, she argues that activities of fisheries support vessels should be better regulated to prevent them from knowingly or inadvertently supporting conditions conducive to IUU fishing and its associated crimes.

Arguments have been made that tracking those support vessels can be beneficial for law enforcement to identify potential IUU fishing hotspots. Another possible role that she highlighted in her blog is that those support vessels can serve as first responders of modern slavery at sea who will report and alert any witnessed human rights and labour violations on board fishing vessels to competent authorities. This would go hand in hand with the universal right of visit under Article 110 of UNCLOS.

The full version is available in open access here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2022/10/26/fishing-and-fishing-related-activities-a-deadly-mutualism-in-the-iuu-fishing-chain/