Fishing Vessel Monitoring Systems: Past, Present and Future

VMS: Past, Present and Future 15
3.5 Where the tampering is
A key element of the risk assessment for VMS terminals is to determine what,
exactly, is the current “state of the art” for cheating. For this reason, enquiries
were made to virtually all of the fisheries compliance entities of the world’s
principal fishing countries so as to determine what experience they have had in
this regard and to specifically quantify and analyze the methods of data
falsification and corruption that have been encountered thus far in VMS
programmes around the world.
To achieve this, Navigs s.a.r.l. made contact with the fisheries protection
agencies of the following countries:
EU coastal states
Norway
Iceland
The USA
Canada
Argentina
Chile
Peru
Forum Fisheries Agency of the South Pacific
New Zealand
Australia
Seychelles
Mozambique
Namibia
South Africa
Angola
Senegal
Morocco
Because of the sensitivity of this information, executing a formal survey with
forms and follow-up would have been out of the question. Consequently, the
vast majority of these contacts were made by telephone and the enquiries were
simply whether the agency in question had experienced questionable behaviour
on the part of VMS-equipped vessels and, that response being positive, if they
would describe that behaviour.
3.6 Earliest tampering
It is important to note that during the first years of VMS operation, all reports of
illegal action – there were no exceptions – were identical in that they all included
some method of disabling the VMS terminal by either disconnecting the power