Select fishing boats licensed

Select fishing boats licensed

PONTIANAK, West Kalimantan: The Ministry of Fisheries and
Maritime Affairs has granted licenses to 800 foreign fishing
boats to operate in the country's marine exclusive economic zone
in a bid to ease the supervision of illegal fishing.

"If there are boats that are not among those 800 licensed
boats operating in the territory, it is certain they are
illegal," said minister Rokhmin Dahuri here on Friday after
giving 16 boats seized from Thai poachers to local fishermen.

He added that current conditions differed greatly from that
before the ministry was established, when some 7,000 illegal
fishing boats operated in Indonesia's maritime territory.

According to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), the 7,000 illegal boats had cost Indonesia
one million tons of fish annually and US$4 billion in revenue.

Rochimin said Indonesia was obliged to license foreign fishing
boats to operate here in accordance with the 1982 United Nations
Law on Sea.

The law states that a country must give licenses to
surrounding countries to operate in its marine zone if the
country is considered unable to fully manage the potential within
its marine zone. -- Antara