Distant water fisheries development and vessel monitoring system implementation in Taiwan—History and driving forces

The management of the distant water tuna fishery in Taiwan

“…Taiwanese government successfully enforced the vessel monitoring systems (VMS) measurement [21]. Taiwan started to implement VMS from 2000 onwards and, at present, all largescale tuna long-line vessels have VMS installed.…”

Application of a vessel monitoring system to advance sustainable fisheries management—Benefits received in Taiwan

“…Alternatively, the design of VMS to automatically send vessel position at requested time intervals to monitoring agencies, is also crucial to trace the vessel position in emergency situation. IMARSAT-C-based VMS on Taiwanese longline vessels generally transmits positions every four or six hours, depending on the regulations of the relative RFMO [9]. Finer reporting time intervals are possible if such is needed.…”

“…Some recently published scientific articles have concluded that global fisheries are collapsing, or even predicted that by the year 2048, commercially valuable species will be completely eliminated [2][3][4][5]. Although the prediction made by Myers and Worm [4] is exaggerated [6][7][8], the general depressed state of fish stocks has nevertheless raised worldwide concerns, and consequently resulted in calls for strengthening management measures on fish stocks by implementation of international legal arrangements (ILAs) by individual nations or Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) [9]. This is not to say that examples of well maintained sustainable fisheries do not exist [10][11][12], rather that the depressed state of many fisheries requires changes to current management approaches.…”

“…While VMS is generally used to track vessel locations for fishery control and enforcement, potential functions, or applications, of this well-accepted high-technology system are much broader [9]. The tracking-information could be utilized to design a host of management rules including spatiotemporal fishing activity regulations and output controls, providing both direct and indirect benefits to management efficiency.…”

“…Taiwan is an important distant-water (DW) fishing nation and recent catches of squid, tunas, and tuna-like species account for the majority of the reported catches worldwide [9]. To improve management efficiency in Taiwan's fisheries, VMS technology has been deployed on fishing vessels beginning in the 1990s, and after 20 years of implementation, approximately 2200 vessels (including DW and coastal fishing vessels) are currently being monitored.…”