In December, the Spanish government issued sanctions against 25 Spanish-flagged vessels that fished near the border of Argentina’s territorial waters between 2018 and 2021. The sanctions were for repeatedly turning off their satellite tracking devices that EU and Spanish laws require to be switched on to indicate a vessel’s location.
Some experts have celebrated these sanctions as essential in curbing illegal fishing practices on the high seas. Not only do laws prohibit vessels from turning off their automatic identification systems, or AIS, but experts say ships that that go “dark” often do so when partaking in illicit behavior, such as crossing into a nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) without authorization.
The sanctions resulted in fines of up to 60,000 euros ($65,000), but they haven’t stopped the vessels from fishing. Currently, at least five of the penalized Spanish vessels, all trawlers, are fishing off the Argentine coast, and experts expect more to arrive in the coming weeks. That said, since the issuance of the sanctions, none of the sanctioned vessels fishing in this area have turned off their AIS devices.
Milko Schvartzman, a marine conservation expert at the Argentinian NGO Environmental Policies Circle, said that even if the sanctioned vessels continue to obey the law by keeping their trackers on, fishing activity off the coast of Argentina is an “environmental time bomb” due to a lack of regulation as well as the sheer number of vessels congregating in this area. He said Spain usually has a fleet of up to 50 vessels operating in the area, including the ones that were hit with sanctions. Then there are about 500 to 600 other vessels from places like China, Taiwan and South Korea gathering along the border of Argentina’s EEZ each year to fish for squid, hake and grenadier. Yet, Schvartzman said, these activities aren’t closely monitored, documented or controlled.
