A berried female crab photographed on September 5, with its eggs scraped out
Xu Chengyu, owner of Upwelling Ocean, who has long promoted seafood traceability, said that the Fisheries Agency requires fishery associations to have at least one person at the fishing port to receive declarations, but unloading happens around the clock, making this extremely difficult to enforce. The current audit measures are almost all aimed at exports, while the domestic market is left unchecked, and much of the distant-water IUU catch is brought back to Taiwan.
He suggested establishing a mechanism at the market trading end, with self-declaration and heavy penalties for violations. In the United States, for example, every vessel has a credit-card-like license, and how much was caught, of what species, and how much cargo was sent to the factory all have to be recorded by swiping the card, with violations fined 100,000 US dollars.
IUU Mini Glossary
According to the "International Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing" formulated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2011, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities are defined briefly as follows:
1. Illegal fishing: fishing activities conducted by national or foreign fishing vessels in waters under the jurisdiction of a state without that state's permission or in violation of its laws; fishing vessels of parties to regional fisheries management organizations violating conservation and management measures adopted by that organization and binding on that state, or violating relevant provisions of international law; fishing activities conducted in violation of national laws or international obligations.
2. Unreported fishing: fishing activities that are unreported or misreported in violation of national laws; fishing activities that violate the reporting procedures of regional fisheries management organizations, are not reported, or are misreported.
3. Unregulated fishing: fishing activities conducted by stateless vessels or vessels of non-parties to regional fisheries management organizations in violation of that organization's conservation and management measures or relevant provisions of international law; or fishing activities that violate the conservation of marine fishery resources.
