The Effectiveness or Not of the New Port State Measures in the Battle to Control Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported Fishing

Abstract

The increasing incidence of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is globally of significant concern to the international community and many individual States such as New Zealand. Due to the seriousness of the issue, IUU fishing is moving to the forefront on the international policy agenda. Various existing conventions and agreements such as the Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC) 1982 and the Fish Stocks Agreement (FSA) 1995, along with various regional agreements relating to the conservation and management of straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks, contain provisions to assist States in developing a variety of strategies to effectively address the multifaceted problem of IUU fishing. In 2009 under the auspices of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) a port State agreement was concluded introducing measures to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. This paper will evaluate the newly introduced 2009 port State Agreement itself to determine not only the effectiveness of the measures contained within the Agreement to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing globally but what is required of the New Zealand government in ensuring the agreement is law nationally .