Illegal fishing & national security

Illegal and unregulated fishing supports transnational crime should be treated as a national security issue, according to a report from the National Geographic Society and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Although illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing provides pathways for a host of criminal activities, “it doesn’t have the consciousness of government imagination” in the U.S. or world, according to John Hamre, CSIS chief executive. Lt. Jessica Conway of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Living Marine Resources Enforcement office says transnational criminals and illegally fishermen “exploit the gaps in government structures.” Those gaps exist in the U.S. , too. The 42,000-member Coast Guard force is smaller than NYC’s police department, with multiple missions spread across the world. Eleven percent of the GC’s time is “devoted to various fishing protection and enforcement,” says Conway. Illegal and unregulated fishing “has the potential to become the crisis of the next century,” she says, because stocks are dwindling and populations demand it. Compounding the problem of what is legal or illegal is the direct impact on local communities and governments losing livelihoods and revenue from illegal fishing. (Source: USNI News 11/16/17) Gulf Coast Note: Coast Guard Sector Corpus Christi, Texas, has detected 18 lanchas, six of which were interdicted, that was north of the U.S./Mexico Maritime Border since Oct. 1, 2017.