Fishers Cry Foul Over Tracking Devices

A tracking device is dividing the fishing industry. The Fisheries Department is rolling out a vessel monitoring system pilot project. The Government of Taiwan gifted forty-five monitoring devices, meant for vessels involved in specialized fisheries. According to the department, the devices will track fishers’ movements, strengthen enforcement against illegal fishing and include an SOS feature. But not everyone on the water is on board. We spoke to Ray Castellanos, a fisherman from Independence Village and a member of the Mango Creek Fishers Association. His concerns are many.

 

On the Phone: Ray Castellanos, Fisherman

“We had no consultation before this VMS come in place. And the Fisheries Department have not been fully truthful in that process. There is many main concern we have about it. One of it will be who will be monitoring our data. Who will have access to this information and how private will this information be to the public or to anyone that could access this. It is one of the main concerns and that we need to know if any mechanism in place to protect us by the law for our privacy. That is private information at the end of the day. As you see, we have everyone basically with the same concerns. So if there was no consultation before the VMS announcement that it was going to be mandatory, we get everyone to understand that we have a very short deadline to implement this device to our vessels.”

 

The Fisheries Department set October 22nd as its mandatory deadline for the installation of the device. 

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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