Australia and Indonesia join forces to combat illegal fishing
Updated
Australia and Indonesia have just wound up a two week operation in the Arafura Sea to combat illegal fishing in both countries' waters.
Presenter:Tom Fayle
Speaker: Australia's Home Affairs Minister, Bob Debus.
DEBUS: The cooperation partly takes the form of having personnel from the several countries in each other's vessels and aeroplanes so that we can indeed coordinate the activities of the boats and planes that are involved in the surveillance. The Indonesian fisheries officer on board our coast watch aircraft was actually able to coordinate the way in which the Indonesian patrol boats deployed themselves in the Arafura Sea, working alongside our customs vessel Triton.
FAYLE: And how long have these joint patrols been going on?
DEBUS: This is the second joint patrol and we are committed to more in the future. Indeed I spent sometime this year with the Indonesian Fisheries Minister, Mr Freddy Numberi, and we agreed on the importance of these patrols and this claim of joint activity. We expect to now continue and increase them into the future.
FAYLE: You say you agreed on the importance of them, but just how significant are they?
DEBUS: Well you see, illegal fishing is not only a problem in Australia, clearly we are concerned for environmental reasons. We are concerned any penetration of our own territorial waters by somebody whose not been given permission to be there. But the Indonesians are also concerned about illegal fishing. Many of the vessels operating illegally in Indonesian waters are in fact essentially run by organised criminals. So we have this mutual interest in making sure that we clear as much illegal fishing away as we can right throughout the area, between northern Australia and the Philippines.
FAYLE: Joint patrols are one thing, but how else are the two countries cooperating in this area?
DEBUS: Well, the joint patrols are of course the top of the activity, underneath you see much more exchange of information between customs and fishing agencies on both sides. The possibilities of detection of illegal activity are of course vastly increased if you've got good intelligence work going on and if indeed that intelligence information is being spread around all of the agencies who have the capacity to apprehend illegal activity.
FAYLE: And, have you been happy with the level of the cooperation from the Indonesian authorities?
DEBUS: Well, it's very interesting to see just how well officers of agencies on both sides of the border have learnt to cooperate with one another. There is a significantly growing sense of solidarity, almost, between the customs and fisheries people on both sides as they realise the extraordinary benefits that can actually flow from this joint activity which has the common purpose of intercepting illegal fishers whatever border they may have crossed.
FAYLE: And finally Minister, I understand this latest joint surveillance operation didn't come up with any evidence of illegal fishing. What's the level of intrusions been so far this year?
DEBUS: Well, the most gratifying aspect is that illegal fishing activity in northern Australian territorial waters has quite sharply declined. Two years ago, there was something like 300 incidents of illegal fishing detected a month. It's now more like 25 or 30 a month. So the fact that this joint patrol did not actually apprehend any wrongdoers is not a sign of failure, it's a sign of the overall success of the activity that we've been undertaking in recent times.
