The Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Sharif C. Sutardjo, asserted that the IUU Fishing activity - in this case is the presence of the illegal foreign fishing boats - is not only detrimental to the Indonesian fishermen, but it also threatens the continuity of the maritime and fishery resource management. The illegal and destructive fishing have to be considered the manifestations of the extraordinary crime as it vividly causes the destruction of the maritime and fishery resource, bearing a great socio-economic loss to the local community. "I really appreciate the performance of the field monitoring officers who have once more arrested four illegal foreign fishing boats, consisting of three Vietnamese-flagged and one Malaysian-flagged fishing boats in the western flank as well as one Philippine-flagged fishing boat in the eastern flank," said Sharif.
Sharif explained that this operational achievement done by MMAF showed that the illegal fishing conducted by the foreign fishing boats is still high. The record speaks that over the 2012, MMAF had conducted the interrogation to 4326 fishing boats. Of that number, 112 among others were accused to commit the violation; 70 boats were foreign fishing boats and the rest was Indonesian boats. "In the last 8 years, MMAF had even inspected 20,064 fishing boats. As the follow-up, 714 of them had been legally processed. Meanwhile, 563 Indonesian fishing boats were allegedly committed IUU fishing," unveiled him.
At the same moment, the General Director of MFRM, Syahrin Abdurrahman, stated, the detainment of five illegal foreign fishing boats is another success of the routine operation of the Directorate General of MFRM. The result, the eastern flank's MB Hiu 003 caught one Malaysian-flagged fishing boat with the hull code of PKFA 7787 (50 GT) on May 16, 2013 in the waters of Malaka Channel. Furthermore, the fishing boat was escorted to the MFRM Station, Belawan to face the legal process.
In prior to the eastern flank's operation, the western flank operation conducted by MB Hiu 009 detained three illegal Vietnamese-flagged fishing boats in Natuna waters, Riau Islands as they had no legal permit document. On May 11, two KG 94023 TS (100 GT) and KG 90616 TS (80GT) hull-coded Vietnamese-flagged fishing boats were arrested and escorted to the Batam MFRM Adhoc Task Force. While the last fishing boat with the hull code of BTH 98655 TS (16 GT) was caught on the following day and escorted to Natuna MFRM Adhoc Task Force. "In the last month, the succeed was also shown well in the monitoring operation in the eastern part of Indonesia where MB Hiu Macan 03 detained one Philippine-flagged illegal foreign fishing boat with the hull code of FB TOT-3 and was escorted to Bitung," explained Syahrin.
For more information, please contact Indra Sakti, SE, MM, The Head of Statistic and Information Center, The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. (Ph. 0818159705)
Editor: PR Wire
Copyright © ANTARA 2013
