Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 10, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-69311-5
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Walton Family Foundation
- ANID PIA/BASAL [FB 0002]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
While illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a premier issue facing ocean sustainability, characterizing it is challenging due to its clandestine nature. Current approaches can be resource intensive and sometimes controversial. Using Chile as an example, we present a structured process leveraging existing capacity, fisheries officers, that provides a monitoring tool to produce transparent and stand-alone estimates on the level, structure, and characteristics of illegal fishing. We provide a national illegal fishing baseline for Chile, estimating illegal activity for 20 fisheries, representing similar to 70% of annual national landings. For four fisheries, we also estimate the relative importance of illegal activities across sectors, stakeholders, and infrastructure. While providing new information, our results also confirm previous evidence on the general patterns of illegality. Our approach provides an opportunity for government agencies to formalize their institutional knowledge, while accounting for potential biases and reducing fragmentation of knowledge that can prevent effective enforcement. Estimating illegal activity directly from fisheries enforcement officers is complementary to existing approaches, providing a cost-effective, rapid, and rigorous method to measure, monitor, and inform solutions to reduce IUU fishing.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available