Enforcement

The Vessel Monitoring System allows us to use 21st century technologies to monitor compliance, track violators, and provide substantial evidence for prosecution.

How We Use It

VMS is used to support law enforcement initiatives and to prevent violations of laws and regulations. VMS also helps enforcement personnel focus their patrol time on areas with the highest potential for significant violations.

The VMS program currently monitors more than 4,000 vessels. It is the largest national VMS fleet in the world. The system operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with near-perfect accuracy, which is why the program is of interest to other users, including the U.S. Coast Guard, academia, and the coastal states. VMS data is, by law, subject to strict confidentiality requirements.

How It Works

VMS is a satellite surveillance system primarily used to monitor the location and movement of commercial fishing vessels in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone and treaty areas. The system uses satellite-based communications from on-board transceiver units, which certain vessels are required to carry. The transceiver units send position reports that include vessel identification, time, date, and location, and are mapped and displayed on the end user’s computer screen.

Each vessel typically sends position reports once an hour, but increases intervals when the vessel is approaching an environmentally sensitive area. Alerts can be sent to the VMS technicians and other personnel when a particular vessel location might require additional inquiry or contact with the vessel operator.

Other Uses for the Vessel Monitoring System

• Managing sensitive and protected areas, like marine sanctuaries.
• Monitoring activity and arrivals in port to plan for sampling.
• Supporting catch share programs.
• Tracking, monitoring, and predicting fishing effort, activity, and location.
• Managing observer programs.
• Verifying/validating data from other sources.
• Identifying fishing vessels.

Learn more about the types of approved VMS units

Regional Vessel Monitoring System Information

• Alaska 
• Northeast  
• Pacific Islands  
• Southeast  
• West Coast 
• Atlantic Highly Migratory Species

Assistance

For program management inquiries, contact Kelly Spalding at kelly.spalding@noaa.gov.

For VMS compliance and technical assistance, contact VMS Support at ole.helpdesk@noaa.gov or (888) 219-9228.

The Cooperative Enforcement Program aims to increase living marine resource conservation, endangered species protection, and critical habitat enforcement while strengthening state and territorial enforcement resources.

The program uses two main tools to accomplish its goals:

• Cooperative Enforcement Agreements, which authorize state and U.S. territorial marine conservation law enforcement officers to enforce federal laws and regulations.
• Joint Enforcement Agreements, which include a formal operations plan that transfers funds to state and U.S. territorial law enforcement agencies to perform law enforcement services in support of federal regulations.

We partner with state and territorial marine and natural resource enforcement agencies to enhance our active presence, visibility, and interactions with the regulated industry. Partnerships with these enforcement agencies help promote compliance with federal laws and regulations under our purview, and our law enforcement agents and officers leverage Joint Enforcement Agreement partnerships to conduct joint operations.

As a country, we import 90 percent of the seafood we consume. We work with various international organizations to protect and conserve global marine resources. This means that in addition to national laws, we enforce international laws, treaties, and agreements that the United States signs as they relate to areas under our jurisdiction. For example, we play a key role in the enforcement of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora when related to marine wildlife.

Examples of Our Work

Our expertise in environmental crime, criminal investigations, the fishing industry, vessel monitoring systems, and case management is consistently sought by the international community. Our special agents and attorneys regularly attend Regional Fishery Management Organization meetings such as the Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Living Marine Resources and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas to provide enforcement expertise and legal advice on compliance issues and the development of new conservation and management measures.

We provided boots-on-the-ground, hands-on training to developing countries to help them protect their own waters. In 2012, our agents and analysts completed monitoring, control, and surveillance surveys for the six countries in the Coral Triangle—Indonesia, the Philippine Islands, Malaysia, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste—to assess what each of the countries is doing to protect its own Economic Exclusive Zone and what their needs are. Because the countries also share maritime boundaries, we used this information to conduct a transboundary workshop for three of the six countries in 2013.

Our agents have also provided training on the use of turtle excluder devices to Central American nations through the Organization of Fishing and Aquaculture in Central America and have provided training to Indonesian fisheries officials on implementation of the Port State Measures Agreement that would close ports of convenience to illegal, unreported, and unregulated vessels.

We are seeing increased recognition of international fisheries crime from other law enforcement agencies. INTERPOL, the world’s largest international police organization, created a Fisheries Crime Working Group in 2011 that conducted several test studies to assess the ability of INTERPOL to combat these types of crimes.

Combating IUU Fishing

Much of our international work focuses on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, capacity building and technical assistance. We have a robust and growing international program, working with various international organizations in the protection and conservation of global marine resources.

Learn more about IUU fishing

Capacity Building

Capacity building involves providing organizations and communities the tools, resources, information, and information sharing avenues to allow them to solve IUU fishing issues, usually through technical assistance and training workshops. We provide capacity building and technical assistance to international partners and agencies through government to government interactions. Through a key partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, we respond to requests for assistance in building enforcement capacity in areas of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands to combat IUU fishing, wildlife trafficking, and to promote sustainable seafood practices.

We also work closely with our Office of International Affairs and Seafood Inspection, the Department of State, Department of State International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, and other agencies to coordinate sustainable fisheries and wildlife trafficking assistance in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Learn more about anti-IUU fishing enforcement efforts

Law Enforcement and International Partnerships

International partnerships are critical to combating IUU fishing. OLE continually works to increase our collaboration with international partners. These activities include information sharing, joint law enforcement operations, technical assistance to increase fisheries enforcement capacity, and participation in meetings between two or more countries. We are enhancing our international activities in the following areas.

Information Sharing and Cooperation in Combating IUU Fishing

The heightened focus on combating IUU fishing globally has made international cooperation increasingly important. Organizations such as INTERPOL have created a Fisheries Crime Working Group to coordinate transnational operations to counteract IUU fishing. OLE actively participates in this forum as well as in routine coordination with other nations. These operations detect and intercept IUU fishing activity and trade in IUU fish or other protected marine species products.

For example, OLE closely coordinates with Canada and Mexico. As bordering countries with similar challenges in enforcing fisheries and preventing protected marine species trafficking, we periodically conduct joint enforcement operations. These operations use a location-based approach to monitor marine products being traded across our mutual borders. This prevents incursions into each country’s exclusive economic zone and lets us share information between enforcement agencies to intercept illegal products in trade.

OLE also has formal agreements with the European Union and Russia to share information and cooperate to combat IUU fishing and trafficking in IUU fish products. Under these two agreements, our countries meet annually to discuss and update cooperative efforts and milestones.

Technical Assistance and Training

OLE provides technical assistance through bilateral, multilateral, and regional cooperation. To enhance fisheries enforcement capacity, OLE engages in direct government-to-government projects. Additionally, OLE helps multiple national governments and organizations collaborate regionally to tackle enforcement operations across boundaries and build capacity through exchanges. For example, OLE works with the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide in-country training to government agencies in Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand, among others. OLE and the U.S. State Department are also partnering with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to build capacity in several Caribbean and Latin American countries for implementing the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Port State Measures Agreement.

OLE also continues to work with the Regional Plan of Action to Promote Responsible Fishing Practices Including Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing (PDF, 9 pages) in the Southeast Asia Region. While OLE is not a member of the organization, OLE routinely works with its members and has coordinated training workshops in the region. OLE supports the organization’s efforts to enhance fisheries enforcement to combat IUU fishing and promote sustainable fishing practices in the region.

Additionally, OLE actively participates in and advocates for the International Monitoring, Control, and Surveillance Network. This voluntary organization is the only global organization specifically focused on fisheries monitoring, control, and surveillance practitioners—inspectors, investigators, and prosecutors. To develop effective communication, collaboration, and training, the International Monitoring, Control, and Surveillance Network hosts a Global Fisheries Enforcement Training Workshop. There have been five workshops since 2005, and OLE has attended each of these workshops hosted in Malaysia, Norway, Mozambique, Costa Rica, and New Zealand. These workshops aim to enable participants to build contacts with monitoring, control, and surveillance specialists across the world; learn about the most effective approaches to combat IUU fishing activities; receive exposure to new problem-solving strategies for IUU fishing issues; and build relationships for locating resources to detect or resolve IUU fishing incidents.

Participation in International Regional Fisheries Management Organizations
The United States is a member of numerous regional fisheries management organizations. OLE serves on U.S. delegations to annual and intersessional meetings to promote information sharing; develop enforcement and compliance guidelines; ensure effective and enforceable conservation measures are developed; work toward collective solutions to global fisheries enforcement challenges; and generate a standard for assessing violations of conservation measures. OLE serves on delegations to various bilateral, multilateral, and regional fisheries management organization meetings on enforcement-related topics. Some larger commissions that OLE participates in include:

On a weekly basis, we'll post highlights of our enforcement actions below and examples of high-interest violation notices. This does not include all weekly actions taken by our officers or special agents.