MalaysiaGIS.com

Kuala Lumpur, Mon - From Jan 1 next year, operators of deep sea fishing vessels who land their catch outside the country will be closely monitored by the Fisheries department via satellite technology.

Agriculture Minister Datuk Amar Dr Sulaiman said use of the computer-based Vehicle Tracking Management System would enable monitoring of illegal landings of fish outside Malaysia.

He said illegal landings of fish in neighbouring countries by these operators had resulted in annual losses of between RM50 million and RM100 million to the deep-sea fishing industry.

Dr Sulaiman said of the over 500 deep-sea fishing vessels currently operating in the Peninsula, 470 vessels registered an average landing of 350 tonnes per year per vessel.

However, he said about 80 have been identified as not complying with conditions set by the department by landing catches outside Malaysia while 39 licenses have been suspended.

Dr Sulaiman said this after opening the Regional Workshop on Fisheries Monitoring, Control and Surveillance in South and Southeast Asia.

Over 40 foreign and local delegates are attending the five-day workshop organised by the Fisheries Department and funded by Norway.

Also present were Norwegian ambassador to Malaysia Calsten Helgeby, department director-general Datuk Mohd Mazlan Jusoh and FAO representative Philip Young.

Each vehicle tracking unit cost approximately RM20,000 and would be an effective tool to monitor activities such as encroachment by deep sea vessels into coastal waters.

He said the encroachment by deep sea fishing vessels could also deplete fish stocks and destroy the coastal fishing industry which provides 80 percent of the country's harvest. Under the VTMS, a vehicle tracking unit on-board the fishing vessel gets the position data from the global positioning satellite system every 15 minutes.

This data together with other information is then transmitted to the Inmarsat-C satellite, which in turn passes this back to earth through a Land-earth station.

The ground station control centre in the department then picks up information via the X.25 network.

Malaysia is the first country in the region to implement the VTMS developed by New Zealand. The system was successfully tested in March.