Today, many ships are using false identities."
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesia Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) has developed an electronic logbook (e-logbook) that will assist in preventing illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing) an official said here Saturday.

"The e-logbook has been completed and we have the patent. We are now offering the technology to the Ministry of Marine and Fishery," Deputy Head of Technology and Development of Natural Resources, Ridwan Djamaluddin, said.

He explained that the e-logbook is a tool for technical governance of the marine and fisheries sectors, which was developed to help reduce IUU fishing that has often occurred in Indonesian waters and has resulted in losses to the country of tens of billion of dollars each year.

To address IUU fishing, BPPT also developed the Vessel Monitoring System, or VMS, 11 years ago. However, this system needs to be improved to assist in the supervision of ships moving at sea by making data accessible online.

"Today, many ships are using false identities. To manage this issue, the identity data of every ship must be made online so that data can be opened and supervised directly by the public. One of the ways is by using the e-logbook," Ridwan said.

The supervision by utilizing VMS and GPS needs to be improved. BPPT suggested that the online monitoring system using VMS could be submitted to a third party, hoping that a 24-hour monitoring could be performed better due to such leverage, he added.

"That third party's task is supervising those vessels fishing in the waters of Indonesia, so they work behind the scenes, similarly to officers in the air traffic control departments. The system is connected to supervisors, so if there is anything suspicious, it can be immediately delivered to them," Ridwan explained.

Ridwan said his research and development team is ready to support the marine and fisheries governance with technical assistance.
(Uu.KR-LWA/INE/KR-BSR/A014)

Editor: Priyambodo RH
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