I have been for most of the week in a meeting here in FFA HQ here in Honiara… and let say that meeting rooms are not my natural environment. So when I got the picture below from my colleagues in Majuro immediately my day got better!
One of the many areas we been working with my friends there for the last years is on intelligence analysis around the Identity, licensing and operations of arriving vessels prior authorising port use, as part of our Port State Measures system.
The operations part requires us to analyse the VMS tracks of the vessels prior entry to port, yet one thing is to look at VMS track and another is to understand the behaviour of a particular type of vessel based on gear deployment and manoeuvring.
Yet while VMS may give you a good indication of what happened at that time and place, sometimes does not suffice as evidence, so once onboard, you need to know what to look for and where to find it, as to compile definitive evidence that can be disputed.
Logbooks (captains’ and chief engineers’), temperature records, onboard GPS plotters, buoy recovery marks, and other inside vessel info are this type of supplementary evidence that makes cases watertight. Furthermore, they show the captain, that you know your job… and in most cases, they accept and assume the charges to cut theirs loses off.
And this is exactly what my colleagues in Majuro have done. Identify the alleged offence manoeuvring, took notes on time and place, boarded went straight to the bridge and took evidence from documentation written and instruments operated by the captain… that evidence is really hard to dispute.
I’m totally stoked for the Oceanic team in MIMRA and for Beau in particular because is such an enthusiastic guy that really took on the PSM process
Mentoring on how different fishing vessels operate (from the manoeuvring to what and where info is recorded onboard) plus the dedication of good officers does work and produce results… simple as that.
Awesome guys… you are living example that things can work and is not all doom in fisheries!