In what federal officials have described as the “most significant international fishing enforcement case in the United States” in 1995, the master of a pirate driftnet vessel fishing in waters north of the Hawaiian chain has been convicted on criminal charges while the vessel itself awaits sale at public auction.
The unnamed high seas driftnet vessel was boarded after a dramatic six-day, 1,100-mile chase on the open seas last July. Masters of two boats in the U.S. albacore fleet began to suspect the presence of a driftnet vessel when they saw scrape marks on the tuna they were hauling in — scars of the same type seen on fish escaping driftnets years ago. After the driftnet vessel was spotted, one tuna boat captain called a friend in San Francisco, who notified Greenpeace offices in California, which then alerted the National Marine Fisheries Service. NMFS, in turn, asked the Coast Guard to investigate. The second captain notified authorities directly.
Stateless
A Coast Guard C-130 plane spotted the driftnet vessel, trailing more than 17 miles of net, when it was about 1,200 miles northwest of Honolulu. The Coast Guard cutter Rush, heading from Alaska to Hawai`i, was ordered to intercept the driftnet vessel.
Under international law, the Coast Guard has limited jurisdiction in the high seas. Permission to board a vessel must either be granted by the master of the vessel or by the government of registry, if the master refuses. When the Coast Guard caught up with the driftnet vessel, the captain failed to respond to requests to board. The vessel then dropped its flag — indicating registry with the People’s Republic of China — and painted out its name (Buyan Lu). In short, according to Paul Ortiz, enforcement attorney with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “the vessel did everything possible to make itself a pirate vessel.”
Once a vessel is determined to be stateless, it can be “assimilated” by any nation desiring to do so. In this case, the United States assimilated the driftnet vessel, but was still not allowed to board it.
After six days of chase, during which time the Coast Guard cutter had to be refueled at sea by the Navy, the Coast Guard decided to try to force the vessel to stop by fouling its propellers. A small inflatable craft was launched from the cutter, carrying a length of thick hawser line. As documented in a video clip taken by aboard a low-flying Coast Guard plane, the crew in the inflatable had to position themselves directly in front of the vessel, which continued to plow through the choppy seas, before releasing the hawser line.
The effort was successful, but Coast Guard crew had no idea what to expect when they finally boarded the vessel. By that time, the master had locked himself in the bridge, and Coast Guard officers were forced to break down the door. The master and officers surrendered peacefully then, and the vessel was towed to Guam.
Ownerless
Efforts to find the vessel’s owner were not successful. According to Ortiz, 32 different flags of registry were aboard the ship, and the name that had been painted over was false. About half the 12-man crew was made up of raw recruits from a fishing technical school in Indonesia; the other half were peasants from the People’s Republic of China. The captain, first mate, and engineer were from Taiwan. All but the captain were repatriated soon after the vessel arrived in Guam.
Investigating officers from the National Marine Fisheries Service eventually came to suspect the vessel’s owner might be in Taiwan. With the assistance of State Department personnel and the office of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a NMFS agent traveled to Taiwan to post the required notice of forfeiture, alerting owners or holders of claims against the vessel of the United States’ intention to dispose of it. But, according to Gene Proulx, special agent in charge of NMFS’ enforcement office in Long Beach, California, the posting of the forfeiture notice itself became a subject of controversy in Taiwan. Newspapers began to criticize U.S. efforts to find the owner, and the posted notices themselves were taken down after just a few days.
Initially, NMFS agents were hopeful that Chen Yuan-Man, the captain of the vessel, would cooperate in tracking down the owner. When the captain refused, he was given the maximum sentence (six months) provided for his misdemeanor crime (“refusing to permit boarding of vessel for inspection”), and was fined $8,000 plus his Rolex watch, which, according to Proulx, represented all his assets at the time of the vessel’s arrest.
Lawless
Since 1993, international law has banned the use of driftnets on the high seas. Driftnetting is a fishing technique that involves setting tens of miles of gossamer, 2-inch-mesh net in the open ocean. While the target species was usually red squid, everything else — from sea turtles to dolphins to seals to seabirds — became trapped in the nets, leading many to call the nets “walls of death.”
Driftnet vessels plied the seas for barely more than a decade, but during that time, dramatic declines were noted in populations of salmon, several species of marine mammals, and some seabirds. No firm evidence existed to link driftnetting to the declines, but video and film clips showing the horrendous bycatch and waste associated with this type of fishing eventually raised a public outcry sufficient to induce lawmakers to ban the practice.
Still, as the pirate vessel shows, driftnetting continues. The catch of driftnet vessels may be transferred to another vessel without the driftnet vessel ever pulling into port; that this occurred in the case of the vessel arrested last summer is suggested by the fact that the vessel’s huge holds were almost empty. (When the catch was sold by the United States in Guam, it brought in just $60,000.) The presence of some 50 miles of driftnet on the vessel itself indicates that somewhere, someone continues to manufacture driftnet gear.
Volume 6, Number 7 January 1996
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