Ok, please stay with me on this. The TCC meeting is happening now in Brisbane, Australia. It is one of the most important meetings of the regional Tuna Commission (I’m sparing you its full name), and where key decisions about protecting Pacific tuna stocks happen. And the VMS is a key issue. Reporting via VMS –a satellite-based, ship tracking system – gives the marine authorities accuratenformation on a ship’s position and speed. Reporting forms the backbone of effective surveillance.

Not reporting is one of a number of tricks ships fishing legally and illegally use to avoid detection, and it’s a very serious one. If a ship’s not reporting then there’s no way of knowing where it has been, nor what or how much its caught.

Ok, still awake and with me? Good. I think a little background may mitigate some of those scary pointy-head words.

I can’t pretend when we were out on our first leg, working with the Federated States of Micronesia’s authorities, I wasn’t disappointed not to make any arrests. We knew pirate fishing was going on, but oh what a spit in the ocean we were. Disappointment turned to sheer frustration as we started boarding vessels clearly behaving suspiciously, but being unable to find the proof to make an arrest.

What were they doing? You got it – not reporting, sometimes for months, through their VMS. The problem however, was that although their systems were switched on, and working the signal was not getting through to the satellite.

It doesn’t take Poirot to work out that this happening with nearly all of the ships we boarded, and that three came from the same company, meant something extremely dodgy was going on.

A little reflection led us to appreciate the value of what we’d found out; that there are no procedures for dealing with a boat with its VMS on, but not reporting. Technically, I’m sure there are a number of ways to address the problem. Some kind of reporting back system similar to one’s you get when a fax or email fails springs to mind.

For us, quite frankly the ultimate responsibility lies with those countries who are sending their boats across the world to take what is left of the tuna from Pacific peoples. And quite frankly, if a boat is not reporting, it must immediately be banned from fishing in the Pacific. There can be no scope for “switched on, but not reporting.” And it was this key demand that we’ve added to our calls at the TCC.

Of course, we have many other demands too. The tiny issue of - well er the fact that if we don’t want to see Bigeye and Yellowfin Tuna go the same way as Atlantic Cod then we need to halve the amount of fishing in the region. Not as some foreign nations would have it ask for more and more boats to come into the Pacific – but I think I’ll save the details of this for another day…