After kicking back with a couple of glasses of local brew, I managed to put things in perspective. My frustrations weren’t with the enforcement officials or the collaboration. It was with the immensity of the Pacific and our lack of resources. We had the Esperanza, a chopper and two experienced enforcement officers but we were patrolling an insanely large 2.7 million square kilometres of ocean. We were trying to find fishing vessels which were having an equally hard time finding fish.

Before we’d started the expedition I hadn’t appreciated the problems the enforcement officials had. They have only three patrol vessels, enough money to fuel only one at a time, and a ship monitoring system which they rely on to generate leads and provide evidence of illegal fishing activity.

Of the five vessels we found, four of them had faulty monitoring systems. To me it seems a ridiculous ‘system’. The ship’s owners couldn’t tell whether their system was sending a signal or not, nor were they allowed to service the system, as touching it would invalidate the security tags. Obviously, everyone is trying to keep costs down. So servicing is kept to a minimum and most of the vessels had rusty aerials - which meant that even if the system works perfectly the signal would only be sent intermittently.

If I were a ship owner I’d be happy with an intermittent signal. That way my ship would still be legal but the Government would have no way of knowing how long I’d been at sea nor what I had caught. A more rigorous monitoring system and resources to send out the three patrol boats is, to me, a no-brainer for reducing illegal fishing in the Pacific.

Check out the slideshow of enforcement activities.