Fisheries in the Pacific

Resources, boundaries and gouvernance: What future for marine resources in Micronesia?
and about 35 in Yap after they were caught conducting illegal fishing and poaching
activities on the reefs of Ngulu, Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi Atolls.
A group of 10 vessels was sighted gathering sea cucumbers and reef fish at Ngulu
Atoll in Yap, and islanders there reported them to the national and state governments.
When Yap State’s request for help from the national coastguard 24 was not met, local
officials put together a small armada of skiffs and outboard motor boats, armed
them with police officers and able citizens, and sailed around 120 km across the
open ocean to Ngulu. There, they were able to successfully catch around 35 illegal
fishermen and confiscate some of their vessels.
Larger groups of illegal fishermen, mostly from Vietnam and some from China,
were caught on the atolls of Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi, south of Pohnpei. The
sailors were mostly from Vietnam while the ship owners were identified as being
either Chinese or Vietnamese. Many sailors in particular have claimed that they
were trafficked to work on the vessels, others submitted claims of being smuggled
and wanting to seek asylum. Figuring out the circumstances and the extent of illegal
activities by these poachers has been a challenge for local authorities due to language
barriers and the varying accounts of the persons interviewed. One confiscated vessel
with its crew under house arrest was able to escape from Pohnpei Harbor during a
typhoon in April 2015 under life threatening circumstances. After the typhoon they
were caught a second time for illegal fishing activities exactly where they had been
arrested the first time. There has therefore been talk of organised crime and trafficking
through investors or ship owners pressuring crews and captains not to return home
empty-handed lest they or their families back home experience further exploitation
or aggression by their employers. While local governments and the International
Organization for Migration (IOM) are trying to assist as best they can, it is difficult
to identify or connect these activities with incidents of human trafficking or human
smuggling.
In Palau, a Chinese poacher was accidentally shot and killed in March 2015 in an
attempt to arrest him and a group of 25 poaching fishermen and confiscate their
vessels. Rather than receiving apologies from China for the illegal breaching of its
boundaries and theft of its marine resources by some of its citizens, the Palauan
government received threats. Accusations of the maltreatment of its citizens and
human rights violations were made in what was clearly an accident that took place
when the Chinese citizens resisted arrest and fled the crime scene (unnamed
24. As mentioned earlier, Yap State is one of four states that make up the Federated States of Micronesia.
It is the western most state while Pohnpei, where the FSM’s three coastguard ships are usually stationed,
is 3 hours away by air plane, equivalent to the distance between Frankfurt, Germany and Moscow,
Russia. It would have probably taken a FSM coastguard vessel up to three days to get to Ngulu Atoll on
the western edge of Yap State, by which time the poachers would have easily escaped.
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