Standardization will increase fidelity of the data collected, while ensuring that methods and reporting mechanisms are harmonized. This is integral to the fight against illegal fishing because successful legal prosecution relies on quality evidence.
Eleven training workshops will be held in Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania. The workshops will facilitate implementation of the Fishing Activity Sighting Checklist, which was agreed to by states participating in an Expert Working Group meeting in the Seychelles during February 2017.
The workshops will be broken into three parts and cover:
- Combatting fisheries transnational crime in the Western Indian Ocean
- Extent of the problem
- Examples of bad actors
- Regional agreements to stop illegal fishing
- Technological efforts to aid in maritime domain awareness (MDA)
- Creation of state-based standard operating procedures for the collection of human intelligence to fight illegal fishing
- Introduction to the Fishing Activity Sighting Report
- Tools need to collect information
- Identifying suspect vessels
- Best practices for collecting human intelligence and creating a systematic approach
- Formatting and sharing of human intelligence
- Identifying lead agencies and interagency coordination
- Beyond Points Of Contact—creating a coordination office
- Best practices for communicating and sharing human intelligence
- Overview of regional efforts and agreements to collect MDA information
- Developing information exchange protocols
Dates for the workshops will soon be announced. Tentatively, workshops will occur in the following months:
May
Maldives
Sri Lanka
July
Kenya
Tanzania
Mozambique
September
Comoros
Madagascar
Mauritius
November
Seychelles
Djibouti
Somalia
