Illegal fishing under spotlight at New Zealand conference

About 200 representatives from 60 countries will gather in New Zealand next week to discuss how to step up the war against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing around the world.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), with the International Monitoring Control and Surveillance Network, would be hosting the fifth Global Fisheries Enforcement Training Workshop in Auckland.

Global cooperation meant there was increasingly nowhere to hide for boats and crews that deliberately plundered high seas fisheries, MPI spokesperson Dean Baigent said in a statement Friday.

"We have a successful network where nations share information gathered from satellite monitoring, aerial surveillance, catch data and vessel inspections that targets illegal operators and makes it very difficult to profit from IUU fishing."

The workshop would be an opportunity for nations to update each other on the latest techniques and technologies and to strengthen the communication ties that make the network successful.

New Zealand was an obvious country to host the global workshop, he said.

"We are responsible for managing the world's fourth largest exclusive economic zone and are an active participant in monitoring and patrolling the toothfish fishery in the Southern Ocean and the tuna fishery in the Southwest Pacific Ocean," said Baigent. Endit