Illegal fishing has surpassed piracy as a United States Coast Guard global concern in the maritime domain, the service’s top officer overseeing response policy said Wednesday.
“The Coast Guard has been in the [fishing] enforcement game for a long time,” said Rear Adm. Jo-Ann Burdian. Most recently it started with enforcing the ban on using high seas drift nets, roughly the size of a football field, that were rapidly depleting fish stocks.
Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing globally has had cascading effects on many nations’ food security and led to conflict on the oceans, as has occurred between Chinese fishing fleets and Filipino fishermen, she noted during a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Illegal fishing, when combined with climate change’s impact on supply and rising sea levels, is also setting off a “crisis of regular migration,” as seen in the Caribbean, Burdian said.
Fishing “is the fundamental pillar [for] how [many of] these countries are sustaining themselves,” said Kelly Kryc, the deputy assistant secretary for international fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Maxine Burkett, the deputy assistant secretary of state for oceans, fisheries and polar affairs, said these “cascading, overlapping issues [of supply and environment] are going to shape foreign policy.” The situation is “especially acute now,” with criminal networks increasingly engaged in trafficking illegal catches, putting further stress on supply.