After decades of enduring severe impact from illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in its vast, resource-rich waters, Indonesia says it's time that the United Nations recognised illegal fishing as a transnational organised crime.
Illegal fishing, Jakarta believes, needs the same kind of high profile as drug smuggling or human trafficking, so that the international community can work together to eradicate practices that take a heavy toll on the environment as well as human rights.
Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Minister Susi Pudjiastuti and Mas Achmad Santosa, head of Task Force 115, which was set up to combat illegal fishing, took their message to Washington earlier this month, where they met with the US Senate Ocean Caucus.
Ms Susi has also been invited to speak at an event on the sidelines of the UN Ocean Conference in New York from June 5-9, during which Indonesia will seek the forum's support to classify fisheries crime as a transnational crime.
The minister believes it would be easier for countries to coordinate efforts to fight illegal fishing if it is recognised globally as a transnational crime.
"Those who are involved are transnational. The vessels are from different countries and with different flags, so are the crews," the Antara news agency quoted her as saying in Yogyakarta on April 6.
Illegal fishing, she added, is often intertwined with other crimes such as contraband and endangered species smuggling, human trafficking and slavery.
"It really requires cross-border cooperation between countries to counter IUU fishing," she said.
A report in January by the International Organization of Migration (IOM), a UN agency, said that IUU fishing in Indonesia was a threat to maritime security and involved transnational criminal activity such as trafficking in persons, although IUU fishing is not regarded as a transnational crime.
The report also revealed "systematic and highly organised deceptive recruitment practices and routine exploitation of fishermen from multiple source countries in Southeast Asia".
Vietnamese trawlers seized for illegal fishing in Thai waters are berthed at the Songkhla naval base in March last year. Photo from Second Naval Area Facebook Page via Bangkok Post
In an Asean workshop on human trafficking and forced labour in the fishing industry last year, Ms Susi said trafficking in people in the fisheries industry was a common problem for Asean countries and could adversely affect the integrity of their fisheries products in the global market, especially in Europe and the United States where a policy on human rights traceability in capture fisheries has been introduced.
Thailand is painfully aware of the possible consequences, having been under a "yellow card" from the European Union for more than two years as it attempts to clean up its fisheries industry.
Yunus Husein, the deputy head of Task Force 115, acknowledges that it could take some time for the UN to recognise illegal fishing as a transnational crime. For a start, different UN agencies may have different views on what constitutes transnational crime.
In the meantime, Indonesia also needs to amend a 2009 law on the ratification of UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, which does not list the fisheries law as one of the national laws that has a similar substance to the convention, said Akhmad Solihin, a lecturer at the School of Fisheries and Maritime Sciences at Bogor Agricultural University.
"We need to amend it first to include the fisheries law in the law that ratifies the UN convention against transnational crime," Mr Akhmad told Asia Focus.
The administration of President Joko Widodo has been taking tough measures against poachers -- foreign and domestic -- and calling for closer regional cooperation to counter illegal fishing activities.
He has been raising the issue at Asean leaders' meetings, most recently at the summit in Manila on April 29, when he stressed the extent of the problem and its close association with other crimes.
The Asean leaders reiterated their commitment in the chairman's statement issued at the end of the meeting.
"We reaffirmed the need to strengthen cooperation and constructive dialogue on maritime security, maritime safety, the maritime environment and other maritime issues, including search and rescue, piracy and armed robbery against ships at sea, illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and other crimes related to fisheries, and other crimes at sea, through Asean led-mechanism," the statement said.
Despite the affirmation, Mr Yunus said it was hard for Asean countries to find common ground on measures to combat illegal fishing, since poachers caught fishing illegally in Indonesian waters come from neighbouring Southeast Asian countries.
"But Indonesia has taken the lead to initiate the establishment of a regional convention on IUU fishing and its related crimes," he told Asia Focus. "It has a regional scope so other countries other than Asean member states can also take part.
"It will also be more flexible given that the Asean consensus style of decision making would make it difficult to reach an agreement between the 10 member states."
Six Asean countries -- Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia -- are among the top 18 capture fishery producers in the world, according to data from The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It is estimated that 3.8 million Indonesians work in the fisheries industry.
Mr Widodo has made combatting illegal fishing a key priority for his government since he took office in October 2014, in line with his administration's vision to make Indonesia a global maritime axis. It aims to sustainably exploit and manage maritime resources, and use them as a source for development as Indonesia, he said, had been turning its back on its sea.
Blowing up or sinking poachers' vessels -- those which courts ruled had been used for illegal fishing in Indonesian waters -- has become a high-profile response used frequently by the government. Indonesian authorities led by Ms Susi have so far sunk and blown up 317 vessels, most of which were from Vietnam.
Mr Widodo has said that IUU fishing costs the country annual losses of at least US$20 billion, endangers 65% of its coral reefs and depletes around 90% of global fish stocks.
Waging war against poachers has produced results in terms of decreasing the rate of fish exploitation in the sea to between 30% and 35%, which made it possible for Indonesia to increase its national fisheries stock from 7.3 million tonnes in 2013 to 9.9 million in 2015, according to data from the maritime and fisheries ministry.
However, the government's aggressive measures still have not deterred some poachers, given that authorities have apprehended more foreign fishing vessels than they did previously.
Ms Susi said that in April this year, patrols by the task force had apprehended 106 illegal fishing vessels -- mainly from Vietnam -- poaching in Indonesian waters. According to the Vietnam News Agency, Indonesian authorities since the beginning of 2017 have arrested nearly 580 Vietnamese fishermen.
"We conduct regular patrols, but we apprehended more poachers than usual. We can say that the figure is higher compared to the same period in the previous years," Ms Susi said on April 21.
She said that efforts to police Indonesia's fertile fishing grounds had emerged as a leading initiative in the region, with other countries taking similar tough measures to manage their maritime resources. China and Thailand are likely to emulate Indonesia by establishing a special task force to combat illegal fishing or imposing moratorium on fishing activities.
According to the FAO, fish supplies about 20% of the protein in Asian diets and fish consumption in the region is estimated to rise by 30% due to increasing population and economic growth. However, production from capture fisheries remains stagnant, making aquaculture as the most likely way to meet the increasing demand.