Several countries come together to control illegal fishing in the Pacific

Yesterday, three institutions of Panama presented a new plan for the control and prevention of illegal fishing in the Pacific, this initiative will have the cooperation of the authorities of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama.

Official sources reported that the project which was announced by the authority of the aquatic resources (ARAP), the national authority of the environment and the ecological Foundation, MarViva, involves each one of these countries that will be responsible for protecting their respective jurisdictional areas, with emphasis on the protected areas.

Giovanni Lauri, general manager of ARAP, pointed out that the main objective is to “eliminate unfair competition from those who are fishing illegally” in what is called the marine corridor of the Pacific Tropical East.

This plan will have a duration of one year with an option to extend it to three, to execute different actions which comply with the current legislation on Fisheries of each nation.

For this reason, some tools have been developed to make the work of the inspectors more comfortable, including guides for fish and invertebrates, Protocol manuals, as well as workshops to improve the training of personnel.

The general manager of ARAP said that the project already obtained its first results, since “in recent months has dropped enormously the number of complaints for illegal fishing, due to controls that are being imposed”.