South Korea is set to begin monitoring all its fishing boats operating in international or foreign waters to prevent illegal fishing or any other unwarranted activities, the government said Thursday.
The country’s first-ever Fisheries Monitoring Center will open in the southern port city of Busan on Friday, enabling real-time monitoring of all South Korean vessels engaged in deep-sea fishing for the first time in the country’s history, according to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.
Information on the real-time location of a vessel may allow the government to issue a warning when the vessel appears to be engaged in illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) fishing in foreign waters.
“The opening of the Fisheries Monitoring Center, along with the requirement for all deep-sea fishing vessels to be equipped with a vessel monitoring system, is at the heart of the government’s efforts to curb IUU fishing,” the ministry said in a press release.
The monitoring center was earlier scheduled to open in July under a revised law on deep-sea fishing that also raised the limit for maximum fines to 200 million won (US$185,000) from 30 million won for illegal fishing.
Yonhap News Agency