You've got to leave some to grow up and have little fish, right?:
An air patrol mission has discovered nearly 100 foreign ships apparently illegally fishing with drift nets off Canada's West Coast.
Cameras on a Canadian air force plane captured images of 90 fishing vessels suspected of breaking a 15-year-old United Nations ban on using drift nets in international waters — fishing meshes as long as 50 kilometres.
[snip]
Earlier in September, fisheries officers from Canada and the United States spent two weeks aboard the Canadian Forces aircraft, scouring millions of square kilometres over the North Pacific. Operation Driftnet concluded last week.
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.' "
[snip]
The Aurora crew found that in some cases, ships could be spotted dumping material overboard and trying to cover markings that identified their boats.
"Ten vessels were observed by Canadian Aurora long-range patrol aircraft either rigged for or engaging in high seas drift-net fishing", said Capt. Jeff Manley of the Canadian Air Reserve.
"These vessels typically sail with few or obscured markings, so without actually boarding them, it's difficult to ascertain their nationality," said Manley. "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, which has been blamed for the indiscriminate destruction of marine life.
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
Leave some fish for the rest of us, please.
