RSS Feed
April 10th, 2018 
Awake Goy A fishing ship carrying 600 illegal nets stretching up to 18 miles has been seized after it escaped Chinese authorities, while using the flags of eight different countries to evade capture.
The vessel, STS-50, had targeted a cod species called Antarctic toothfish that plays an important role in the Southern Ocean ecosystem, according to Indonesia‘s fisheries ministry.
Its hundreds of gillnets had walls of fine mesh and could expand to a distance of 18 miles. Gillnetting has been banned in Antarctic waters since 2006 and is described by Australia as posing a “huge risk to almost all marine life, including marine mammals due to [its] indiscriminate nature”.
The use of the nets also harm seabirds including endangered albatrosses, the country’s environment department said on its website in 2011.
Indonesia was acting on a request from Interpol when it seized the officially stateless craft. It had eluded authorities by flying eight different flags at different times, including those of Sierra Leone, Togo, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan, Micronesia and Namibia, the ministry said in a statement.
Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blacklistednews/hKxa/~3/ayS9aFz0e6o/fishing-boat-caught-with-illegal-18milelong-nets-a-risk-to-almost-all-marine.html
Posted in 
Tags: 
