January 22, 2016 — Non governmental organizations Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), Oceana and WWF welcome a new European Commission (EC) requirement that all EU fishing vessels, and foreign vessels fishing in EU waters, need to have unique vessel numbers from construction to disposal.
The measure will affect up to 8,205 European vessels.
The decision is a key reform that helps close a decades-old loophole allowing fishing vessels around the world to evade scrutiny, fueling illegal fishing.
EJF’s Executive Director Steve Trent said, “This is a powerful signal by the EU that fisheries must become more transparent. Sometimes the simplest reforms can have profound impacts, and that is the case here.
“It is ridiculous that planes, cars and even European cows have unique numbers to enable lifetime tracking, but fishing vessels haven’t. This has allowed unscrupulous operators to fish illegally in one country and then swiftly change identity and nationality and do the same elsewhere.”
Until recently, a global scheme operated by the International Maritime Organisation(IMO) that assigned unique numbers to vessels for their entire lives specifically excluded fishing vessels.