Jorge Eduardo Maguiña Aliaga, General Director of Supervision, Inspection and Sanction of the Vice-Ministerial Office of Fisheries and Aquaculture of Peru's Ministry of Production during the presentation of the IUU fishing workshop.
Photo: Produce.
In a joint effort with the National Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Peru’s Ministry of Production (Produce) is holding the 'Workshop for Port State Controllers on the Port State Measures Agreement' (AMERP) to fight IUU fishing.
During nine days - from May 15 to 23 - professionals from Peruvian national entities involved in preventing, deterring, and eliminating illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing are receiving training from NOAA experts in this fight.
Peru institutions present at the workshops are the Peruvian Navy's General Directorate of Captaincies and Coast Guards, the National Port Authority, the National Superintendency of Customs and Tax Administration, the National Fishery Health Agency, and the Ministry of Production itself.
For all of them, NOAA instructors have prepared training focused, above all, on improving the effectiveness of intervention audits through theoretical examples. However, practical examples will also be given during the workshop.
To this end, participants will embark on fishing vessels and carry out activities related to knowledge of boarding and inspection procedures, fish identification, investigation, evidence collection and control, document verification, physical inspection, and personnel interrogation, which will assist inspectors in their fieldwork.
This set of actions will allow Peruvian authorities to have better control of the extractive fleet, which in turn, will help Produce adopt the necessary management measures to contribute to the sustainability of hydrobiological resources.
So far this year, the Peruvian Ministry of Production has already carried out more than 59,150 surprise inspections in its fight against illegal fishing at the local level.
As a result of these inspections, more than 1,074 tons of hydrobiological resources have been seized, most of which were delivered to low-income people through municipalities and other charitable entities.
Approved by the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in November 2009, the AMERP - the Agreement that is the subject of the workshop - is the first international treaty specifically focused on fighting against IUU fishing.
The way to achieve this is to prevent illegal fishing vessels from using ports to land their catches, thereby reducing their incentives to continue operating, and also slowing the flow of fishery products derived from IUU fishing to national and international markets.
Illegal fishing is one of the most recognized threats to fish stocks not only in Peru but worldwide. Last year, for example, the European Union reported that its fish stocks were recovering in some areas but IUU fishing continued to be one of the challenges that, together with others such as climate change or mortality, they had to face yet.
