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This article examines four major maritime law enforcement response areas: Drug trafficking, piracy, migration, and illegal fishing. It examines specific questions related to fisheries law enforcement including the detention of IUU fishers, use of force and under what circumstances may a vessel be destroyed. It finds that courts are increasingly addressing issues once considered within the sole discretion of government officials and operational commanders with the result being an ad hoc collection of judicial opinions, treaties, and multilateral agreements that lack coherence and consistency.

This paper highlights the use of transhipment activities to hide IUU fishing. Transshipment allows fishing vessels to stay at sea; sometimes for years at a time and has been linked to transnational crime and human rights violations. The Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (PSMA) is a binding international treaty of the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
With growing participation in the PSMA AIS data can be utilised to better inform the decision making process and implementation. This paper discusses the methodology and application of AIS which offers reliable and accessible information regarding port visits that has previously been difficult to obtain.

This report recommends the need for action in North Sumatra to tackle the continued and sometimes deadly conflicts between traditional fishing communities and trawlers. The authors explain the large increase in the number of trawlers in the 1970s and 1980s entering the 3-mile zone reserved for traditional fishing activities. These incursions by trawlers into the traditional fishing zone and the lack of government action is resulting in contact with tragic consequences.

This report considers obstacles to, and opportunities for, more effective action to address IUU fishing and the role the role that transnational organised crime plays in the IUU fishing industry. This report examines the experiences in five countries: Indonesia; Thailand; Vietnam; Tanzania; and South Africa and examines the approaches taken by those states and the successes and failures of their policies.

In an extensive one-year research on Thailand's overseas fishing fleets, Greenpeace finds that many of Thailand's distant water fishing fleets participate in illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing. Despite the Thai government passing regulation in 2015 to control distant fishing fleets, Greenpeace uncovers multiple enduring human rights violations. Many of Thailand's companies, aided by large refrigerated vessels known as "reefers", are once again sailing at sea, continuing practices that lead to trafficking, fatalities, disease, and countless other human rights violations.

This Issue Paper is based on a desk review of research carried out on Transnational Organised Crime at Sea, with particular emphasis on existing UNODC materials concerning transnational organized crime at sea and
the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It also captures discussions held in an expert group meeting Vienna held in November 2012 and serves as a background document to the recommendations of the expert meeting. The paper examines piracy and armed robbery at sea, migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons, drug trafficking, organized crime within the fishing industry and oil bunkering, both in terms of the specific activities and the common challenges and intertwined elements of these crimes.