http://www.mytelus.com/ncp_news/article.en.do?pn=regional/british_columbia&articleID=2762955(CBC) - An air patrol mission targeted 90 foreign ships early this month suspected of illegally fishing with drift nets in international waters off Canada's West Coast, the commander for the high-seas drift net patrol said.
Fisheries officers from Canada and the United States spent two weeks aboard a Canadian Forces aircraft, scouring millions of square kilometres over the North Pacific, Maj. Chris Bard told CBC News Thursday.
Cameras on the Aurora long-range patrol plane captured images of 90 fishing vessels, which fit the profile of ships that routinely break the 15-year-old United Nations ban on using drift nets in international waters, he said.
Ten of those vessels were observed "either rigged for or engaging in high seas drift-net fishing," public affairs officer Capt. Jeff Manney of the Canadian Air Reserve told CBCNews.ca. One was boarded and escorted to a Chinese frigate, he said.
Bard said it was obvious to him what was going on after the Aurora long-range aircraft swooped down on the ships.
"Once we made our presence known, they all became very evasive - tried to confuse us by manoeuvring, making our photo passes very difficult," he said.
When the plane began monitoring one Chinese vessel, the active radio chatter they had been listening to suddenly became "dead silent," Bard said.
"As soon as we showed up, the radios became dead silent. The only thing we heard - or our translator heard - was, 'We're getting out of here.' "
The Aurora crew found that in some cases, ships could be spotted dumping material overboard and trying to cover markings that identified their boats, Bard said.
"These vessels typically sail with few or obscured markings, so without actually boarding them, it's difficult to ascertain their nationality," Manney said. "These vessels target species such as salmon, albacore and neon flying squid."
In 1992, the United Nations General Assembly put a moratorium on drift net fishing, because the mesh nets, as long as 50 kilometres, indiscriminately trap a wide range of fish species, marine mammals and sea turtles.
The Chinese government takes the problem seriously, and has its own enforcement officers on board U.S. Coast Guard ships, said Ted McDormand, an ocean law expert from the University of Victoria.
"China's had this memorandum with the United States since 1993, which came right after the General Assembly resolution on the moratorium, so China's stepped up here to be a reasonably responsible fishing state," he said.
Using the Canadian surveillance, the U.S. Coast Guard was able to intercept a Chinese trawler, board it and then turn the boat over to Chinese authorities.
International surveillance of the waters is a collaborative effort with Canada, Russia, Japan, Korea and the U.S. The seasonal surveillance mission over the North Pacific has been conducted every year since the 1992 UN moratorium.
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Topic: Patrol spots 90 suspected drift netters in North Pacific (Read 3442 times)