Sri Lankan fishermen, often from Beruwala, engage in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in the waters of other countries and territories in the Indian Ocean. IUU fishing, as it’s known, is thought to account for about 20% of the world’s total fish catch, undermining efforts for sustainable fishing.
While the massive, distant-water industrial fleets like those of China and South Korea have come to epitomize IUU fishing, in Sri Lanka the practice largely the domain of traditional fishers. These fishers have from historical times engaged in what’s known as “island job,” or dupath rassawa in the Sinhala language — fishing in the shallow coastal waters off small islands. And the abundance of such islands throughout the western Indian Ocean — from the British-administered Diego Garcia to Seychelles, Mauritius and the Maldives, to the Myanmar and Bangladesh islets in the Bay of Bengal — gives the fishermen plenty of choice.
According to Sri Lanka’s Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DFAR), 121 multi-day fishing boats flying the country’s flag were seized in foreign waters from 2019 to 2021. Of these, 31 were seized in the Maldives, 19 in Diego Garcia, 10 in Seychelles, four in Bangladesh, and three in Myanmar. Fifty-four vessels were apprehended in Indian waters.
In 2014, the European Union cited IUU fishing practices as the main reason for imposing a ban on imports of fish from Sri Lanka. This had a crippling effect on the island’s seafood industry and associated livelihoods. The EU lifted the ban in 2016 after the Sri Lankan government initiated steps to curb IUU fishing, including imposing a vessel monitoring system (VMS) on multi-day boats that sail beyond Sri Lankan waters.
Sri Lanka has about 4,200 registered multi-day fishing boats, of which around 1,500 operate in international waters and all fitted with VMS equipment for easy vessel tracking. These high-seas vessels are all licensed to fish in international waters, but not in the waters of other jurisdictions — typically defined as within 200 nautical miles (370 km) of those countries’ coast.
The Sri Lankan government has also prepared and implemented a national plan of action, in line with the FAO’s international plan of action, to prevent, deter and eliminate IUU fishing.