Illegal Fishing

Illegal fishing takes place where vessels operate in violation of the laws of a fishery. This can apply to fisheries that are under the jurisdiction of a coastal state or to high seas fisheries regulated by regional organisations.

Unreported fishing is fishing that has been unreported or misreported to the relevant national authority or regional organisation, in contravention of applicable laws and regulations.

Unregulated fishing generally refers to fishing by vessels without nationality, or vessels flying the flag of a country not party to the regional organisation governing that fishing area or species.

The drivers behind illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing are clear enough, and similar to those behind many other types of international environmental crime. Most obviously, pirate fishers have a strong economic incentive: many species of fish, particularly those which have been over-exploited and are thus in short supply, are of high value.

Such IUU activity may then show a high chance of success – i.e. a high rate of return – from the failure of governments to regulate adequately (e.g. inadequate coverage of international agreements), or to enforce national or international laws (e.g. because of lack of capacity, or poor levels of governance). A particular driver behind IUU fishing is the failure of a number of flag states to exercise any effective regulation over ships on their registers – which in turn creates an incentive for ships to register under these 'flags of convenience'.

Since no-one is reporting catches made by pirates, their level of fishing cannot be accurately quantified. However, industry observers think that IUU occurs in most fisheries, and accounts for up to 30% of total catches in some important fisheries.