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Registering boats, recording catch a must: Fisheries Dept.
The Fisheries Department issued two gazette notifications concerning deep sea fishing by Sri Lankan fishermen which makes it compulsory to register all boats and maintain log records of the catch on each fishing trip.
The two gazette notifications were issued to comply with a requirements set out by the European Union if Sri Lanka was to continue exporting its fish products to its member countries. The deadline to comply with the requirements set out by the EU to prevent illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) is September 26. Failure to meet the deadline would have resulted in a complete ban of fish exports to the EU. The country was previously issued a yellow card two years ago for insufficient action taken to prevent IUU.
“They are very serious about IUU and wanted us to establish a proper legal frame work to regulate deep sea fishing. We didn’t have legal provisions to register boats fishing in the high seas before”, explained Nimal Hettiarachchi, Director General of the Fisheries Department.
Boat registrations done by the department earlier was in their administrative capacity, Mr. Hettiarachchi claimed.
However the fish data log book was introduced as a new requirement, he said.
The EU has already banned three countries Belize, Cambodia and Guinea-Conakry which were issued yellow cards along with Sri Lanka, from trading any fisheries products with the EU. These countries were banned from exporting fisheries products to the EU because their actions against illegal fishing were insufficient.
Sri Lanka was given a warning in 2012 for insufficient action to prevent illegal fishing, and the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources was required to regulate the fisheries industry and adopt sufficient measures to prevent and eliminate IUU fishing.
The EU is Sri Lanka’s dominant trade partner for fish and fisheries product exports, bringing in an income of about Rs. 22 billion annually. Import regulations to the EU require submitting fisheries data of the products being exported to the sector such as catch input and licensing. Failure to produce such data can be grounds to reject the products from entering the EU market, Mr. Hettiarachchi said.