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The 2009 Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) was the first legally binding international instrument to
empower port States to deny foreign vessels suspected of having engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing from using their ports and to land catches. This paper builds upon previous work analyzing 2020 AIS data to rank fishing ports globally and assessing evolving port State risk and port States performance in PSMA implementation.

This paper presents a conceptual model for the analysis of the costs and benefit aspects of the risk inherent in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) activity. The researchers use data to analyze the cost and benefit aspects of risks of IUU fishing. A key result of the study is that for the cases analyzed as a group; the expected benefits from IUU fishing far exceed the expected cost of being apprehended. For an assumed 1 in 5 chance of being apprehended, the researchers calculate that reported fines for the vessels apprehended will have to be increased by 24 times for the expected cost to be at least as much as the expected benefits.