Kaya Selby
RNZ Pacific journalist
Tuvalu has arrested a
Chinese tuna longliner, borrowing a vessel from a wellknown
conservation charity to do so.
On the evening of 9
July, Tuvalu Police Force maritime trackers picked up
something strange about a vessel they were watching. From
there, they boarded the Allankay, a vessel owned by
Sea Shepherd International, and went to
investigate.
According to Sea Shepherd, police found
the crew of the Lu Rong Yuan Yu throwing illegally
caught shark fins overboard while stockpiling tuna and
keeping essentially no records.
Experts say it is a
“quite exceptional” kind of arrangement, where developing
countries, particularly in Africa, lean on an NGO for law
enforcement. But Sea Shepherd says it is a model that has
proven successful, and they hope to bring it to the
Pacific.
Sea Shepherd’s chief campaigns officer Peter
Hammarstedt told RNZ Pacific that Tuvalu had come to them
with a partnership in mind after their lone patrol boat, the
Te Mataili II, was destroyed by cyclones Judy and
Kevin in 2023.
“When somebody comes into the waters of
Tuvalu and fishes illegally, it is a direct assault on the
livelihoods of Tuvaluans,” Hammerstedt said.
“Tuvalu
asked us if we could send our ship there to help fill that
law enforcement vacuum.”
Tuvalu’s Transport Minister
Simon Kofe has thrown hias support behind the group,
thanking it for its support in public LinkedIn posts.
Hammerstedt said there is more to come in the
Pacific.
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The Tuvaluan government did not respond to
requests for comment.
‘Three-dimensional
chess’
Ships worldwide operate on the Automatic
Identification System (AIS), which gives their location in
real time via transponders, to stop them from crashing into
each other.
But here the AIS transmission was quite
simply impossible. It transmitted a latitude that put it on
the equator – but if the longitude were true, the vessel
would no longer be on the planet.
It did not take long
for the police to realise that it was a spoof – a scrambled
signal to mask the ship’s location so it could travel in the
dark.
“It’s used repeatedly by the Chinese distant
water fishing fleet,” Hammarstedt explained.
“If
you’re sitting at a computer looking at fishing activity,
you may notice Chinese fishing vessels smack-dab in the
middle of continental Europe … the Mongolian desert …
even the Australian outback, and that’s because the
information being put out if simply rubbish.”
In this
case, it was a giveaway. Authorities made the assumption
that the vessel would not expect any law enforcement in the
area because they were tracking ships they knew
of.
Hopefully, Hammarstedt explained, the dark vessel
would think they were in Fiji, not Tuvalu – because they had
hidden their location too.
“This is why we stagger our
arrival and we stagger the times that we visit our partner
countries … it’s like three-dimensional chess.”
By
the morning the Allankay had arrived to find a
longliner with a small Chinese crew.
“When coming up
on the vessel, the Police noticed that their nativation
lights were completely shut off,” he recalled.
“Once
they got on board, they noticed that their fishing
authoritsation had expired.”
As they searched, they
found piles of tuna, and witnessed crew members throwing
shark carcasses overboard. Records going back months made no
mention of sharks, which are illegal to target and must be
logged whenever there is any bycatch. With that, Tuvalu
arrested the captain and crew, and detained the boat in
Funafuti.
“They’ll make a decision in the next few
days whether or not to prosecute the ship and lay
charges.”
First arrangement of its kind in the
Pacific
Sea Shepherd, once known for tailing Japanese
whaling vessels, has moved toward partnerships with law
enforcement, particularly in African countries.
They
are most famous for using confrontational tactics in the
high seas, with illegal fishers and whalers the primary
target. A “jolly rodger” style flag adds to their
aura.
A journal article from Chatham House’s
International Affairs published in January, which featured
interviews from SS workers, discussed this “exceptional”
arrangement as a reflection of those countries’ weakness in
the face of external pressures.
But for the Pacific,
with its Forum Fisheries Agency and the tens of millions in
annual funding it receives, one may wonder why the skull and
crossbones is necessary.
“Sea Shepherd seeks to
complement those efforts,” Hammerstedt said.
“It’s
another thing to have that intelligence, but also make that
intelligence actionable, because there is a vessel in Tuvalu
at that very moment that can bring the police to investigate
that suspicious target.”
The FFA told RNZ Pacific that
they had no involvement in the partnership.
The ship
remains in Funafuti, with Tuvaluan authorities to announce
whether charges will be laid in the coming
days.
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