 Welcome back. This is our third panel today on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. All conference materials are available for download at the bottom of the events page, and there's a link to that in the chat. This conference program has the full bios available and the agenda for today. This event is being recorded and will be available in the Naval War College YouTube page after the event. I really look forward to this talk today on IUU fishing with our experts. Our moderator is Commander Michelle Shalup. Commander Shalup serves as a special assistant to the 32nd Vice Commandant of the US Coast Guard. She has completed five of float tours, including plank owning commanding officer of US CGC Kobaya, an 87 foot patrol boat in Mobile, Alabama. She is commanding officer of US CGC Spar, a 225 foot sea going buoy tender in Kodiak, Alaska. And most recently, as executive officer of US CGC Healy, a 420 foot medium icebreaker in Seattle, Washington. Commander Shalup holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Central Michigan University, a master of public administration from Grand Valley State University, and a master of arts with distinction from National Security and Security Strategic Studies from the US Naval War College. She is an alumni. Please join me in welcoming Commander Shalup as she leads this third panel on IUU fishing. I have the honor today of moderating a panel with subject matter experts on illegal unreported and unregulated or IUU fishing and how these practices are affecting the global maritime strategic environment and what that means for our navies and coast guards. Before I introduce our speakers, I want to provide some administrative guidance that will sound familiar. All comments reflect the positions of the speakers and attendees and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the US Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, or the US government. Please keep your microphone and cameras off. Please post all questions and comments in the chat for question and answer period after the presentations. The biographies of all of our speakers are available in the conference program. This panel has three distinguished speakers. Our first presenter is Dr. Ife Sinachi Okafor Yarwood, lecturer in sustainable development at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her work advances an interdisciplinary understanding of oceans sustainability and criminality as a question of resource management, environmental justice, and the disproportionate effects of depleting marine resources on equality, poverty, and insecurity. As a reminder, her full biography as well as that of our other two panelists can be found in detail in today's program. Welcome to the panel, Dr. Okafor Yarwood. Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to share my screen and then start the presentation. So today I'm going to be talking about the complexities of IUU fishing, the African experience, while the focus of today's presentation is seemingly an Africa and by the end of today's presentation you get to understand why, given that we're working with the theme of human security. I have also provided some global perspective to help us contextualize the extent of a problem from the global level. And in looking at this subject, given that we have human security to work with, I'm going to be starting today's presentation by paraphrasing this quote that is attributed to Admiral Don Fisher in 1904. He noted, if we lose command of the sea, it is not invasion we must fear, but starvation. Although he was speaking about this in the context of the tracks that the Navy faced at the time, this is actually the reality of millions of people across the globe, many of whom are on the African continent who depend on fisheries for livelihoods. And so today we're going to be talking about IUU fishing as a threat to human security. And actually by the end of today's presentation, you get to understand why it is also by extension a threat to national, regional and global security and not just a human security thing. So what is illegal fishing. It represents activities that are consistent with or in conservation of the management or conservation measures in falls to a particular fishery management or conservation measures, either put in place by a state or regional fisheries management organization. It is mostly conducted by vessels without nationality of vessels flying the flag of a nonpartisan state to regional organization. It is also managed by fishing without authorization fishing with a vessel without a flag fishing in an enclosed areas, including MPAs fishing and ensure waters, you know maybe fishing with authorization, but in areas that is restricted to the vessel, and also fishing for prohibited species. Why should we be talking or focusing on IUU fishing? Why not something else? Well, we're focusing on IUU fishing not just because of the significant contribution that fish make or fisheries product makes for livelihoods and provide an employment for millions of people globally. It's also because of the fact that it exacerbates the depletion of fish stock. So take for example, already globally, the marine environment is grappling with the impact of marine pollution, and I'm going to draw some example from the NIDA Delta area of Nigeria. The extent of all your pollution in the NIDA Delta area is such that 42% of the man group of the NIDA Delta is oiled, and of course this is very problematic because research have shown that about 60% of the species that breed in the Gulf of Guinea or the fisheries in the Gulf of Guinea breed in the man group of the NIDA Delta. So it automatically means that anything that undermines the sustainability of fish stock in the NIDA Delta is in itself a threat to the food security of countries in the Gulf of Guinea because of course we recognize that fisheries is migratory in nature. And there's also the threat of toxic waste dumping by multinational oil companies and and also foreign travelers from foreign countries and and also the intentional or illegal also unintentional sometimes dumping of toxic waste and some of you might recognize this in the image of this vessel on the screen of Probo Cola from 2007, which illegally dumped toxic waste in Côte d'Ovoire, although the impact of waste is not as extensive as it was in 2007, but the impact is still felt in some of the communities that were affected in the Abrié Canal region of the Abizhan in Côte d'Ovoire. And then when we look at illegal fishing and its extent in West Africa alone, some research have shown that it amounts or it represents up to 40 to 65% of the legally reported catch, making the region the IE fishing capital of the world. In comparison, if you look at it from the global perspective, there are also so many other regions that grapple with this threat, but not to the extent that West Africa does. And then we have the impact of climate change. According to a 2017 report by the World Bank or blog by the World Bank. This something is done to manage fisheries species and of course if the sea level continue to rise by 2050, the fisheries resources in the waters of West Africa is going to be halved. In Nigeria I talked about up to by up to 53% in Nigeria up to 56% in Côte d'Ovoire and up to 60% in Ghana. And of course very problematic, given that research have shown that up to 50% of the fisheries in the waters between Nigeria and Senegal is currently already exploited. So that gives you the extent of the problem and the reason why we are right to be focusing on illegal fishing as a threat to not only human security but by extension national and regional security. It's a threat of legal fishing, because in a lot of the time we talk about illegal fishing and sometimes sort of excuses the fact that true legal agreement countries and distant water fleets are also targeting fisheries stock or fish stock that are already over exploited and therefore exacerbated the extent to which some of this talk is sort of going near to extinction and undermining livelihood for local communities and not allowing time for it to regenerate. There's also the threat of the blue economy or the development of the blue economy as so many countries not only on the African continent but also in Latin America and Asia and the Caribbean are becoming more aware of the potential of the resources within the ocean environment. They are becoming more interested in exploiting the ocean environment, developing the ocean environment in either through tourism, expansion of port infrastructure, all these things together exacerbates the threat to fishery sustainability and the people that suffer are the fisher folk who every day have to grapple with the fact that the fish stock that they're able to exploit is reducing due to all these activities are highlighted. And so now we're coming back to illegal fishing or the reason why illegal fishing is also very important for us to study from a global perspective. According to the FAO in 2020, in 1990, the fish stock in terms of the biological sustainability level of the global fish stock was 90%. By 2017, the biological sustainability level is 65.8%. That is of course worrying given that it's now four years since this data was produced. It is probable that given the fact that not much has been done at the global level to ensure sustainability that this level might have reduced or become worse from the level we're seeing presently. And then if we're looking at the cost or the global cost of illegal fishing, again FAO in 2015 noted that illegal fishing cost the global community between 10 to 23 billion dollars each year. On the African continent in 2013, the former president of the African Union noted Madame Zuma, she noted that in the last 50 years the continent had lost up to 200 billion to illegal fishing. This was in 2013. And then in 2017, a research noted that five West African countries lose an estimated 2.3 billion each year to illegal fishing. Those countries include Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Sierra Leone. At the global level, I've already talked about illegal fishing and mountain or representing 40 to 65% of legally reported catch in West Africa. So you can see how it compares to the global level where it accounts for an estimated 20% of the legally reported catch. So this is absolutely something that is very worrying and something that warrants looking at when we're looking at generally threats at sea and how it impacts not only the human people that rely on this fishery stock for subsistence, but also the states that might rely on the revenue for their development. And so why does this happen? Why does illegal fishing happen? So many people have already hinted the reason for this and the cost of their presentation. It happens due to lack or limited of enforcement capacity. It happens due to lack of state interest in the sector, due to a flag of convenience, foreign investors taking advantage of the minimal regulation or cheap registration in select countries. It happens due to corruption. It happens due to greed and it also happens due to politics. And in general, you know, the lack of authentic, you know, when we talk about this as a global problem, or when it comes to solving the problem or the threat to sustainability, the nations are actually very individualistic in the way that they solve this problem because they end up as fortunately unsustainable practices elsewhere in the cause of trying to ensure sustainability at home. So in fact, the way sometimes the global community look at it on paper, they look at this threat as a global problem, but in practice the way that nations actually try to solve this problem, they're very individualistic and nationalist in the way they try to solve the problem. And I'm going to focus on the next slide, the politics of this thing that also makes it very complex when we're talking about illegal fishing, what exactly amounts to illegal fishing, and can state easily contest it. Or is this also about power. And I'm focusing on this example because it's very recent and a lot of the time this is something that is cited when you talk about Oh, illegal fishing has happened. And then the next question is, but what is the legal definition of it and what is the legal contest that this thing has happened. And I'm focusing on this because in 2019, an NGO CFA noted or made a complaint to the European Union that an Italian vessel has encroached the Sierra Leone and inshore waters up to six up to six Italian vessels. And so they wrote to DG Mario this is the European Union my time department to question it, but then by 2021, the DG Mario's legal action responded, noting that no legal activity of the operators can be proven in this instance, there isn't the lack of exact nautical maps for the limitation of Sierra Leone IZ creates difficulties in identifying the actually legal activity from those being carried out outside the IZ and this is very problematic because as we know, there is no wall that delineates, you know, the ocean and therefore making this kind of argument is something that vessels that already have legitimate right to operate in any nation can make and they are talking about well, especially when we're talking about illegal fishing that involves encroachment of internal exclusive economic zone which unfortunately is actually some of the types of illegal fishing that we're seeing in Western Central Africa and also increasingly constant conflict between the trawlers in question and the local communities who feel that their fish is being taken by those that sometimes have legal right. We're not talking about those that actually encroach the waters or the EEZ to fish without authorization. And then what is the human security implication of all these things that is happening. What are the impacts. So we look at this from this perspective. In the bank report, generally, and due to the general impact of depletion, the income of fisher folk or artisanal fishers on the African continent have reduced by up to 40%. And so as a result of this, a lot of fishes are either leaving the fish trade to migrate to the cities sometimes legally, sometimes illegally. I see some of these examples been manifest in the cases of Senegal, a lot of fish and folk are actually openly abandoning fish trade and living for Europe. And when you ask them they say that the vessels have come and taken our fish now we're flowing them back to Europe. This is a very common example that has been cited by some of the fisher folks that have migrated or try to migrate from Senegal to Europe. They can also engage in illegal fishing in turn by fishing with dynamite fishing in areas that is restricted or fishing close to oil pipelines, and sometimes the risk of accident is then accelerated. And then when there's actually an accident we see the cycle of this, you know, the pollution from the accident the cycle of depletion repeats itself. You can borrow money to diversify their income. Sometimes actually borrow money from the wrong people, which actually also exposes them to threat, and also exposes them to criminal actors, who might then use it or try to use as a leverage to say okay you can use your experience to do this at a very limited risk. The importance of fish stock or fisheries species for women, given that over 80% of fisheries species actually marketed by women in West Africa. Unfortunately, a lot of women in trying to ensure guarantee supply is changing or pressured into sexual favor, in addition for insurance state supply. We also see fisher folk using their boats to traffic drugs like manganese or cannabis, and sometimes even engage or collide with bigger criminal actors to traffic drug to transport, and that's the pickup drugs at sea. We also see them acting as umbrellas or look out for pirates indirectly, which also equates to engaging with engaging in piracy directly, especially if they are at the higher level of the criminal network. Another very common examples of some of the things criminals of fisher folk have been known to engage in is illegal oil bunkering or even pipeline vandalization. And for them is just a thing of well we have to make a living somehow and these are the realities of today. These are the things that they cite and these are the reasons that they cite as the motivation behind some of the act. Even beyond the illegal fishing, it was very common for me not to present this graph, but I thought it was necessary to present it because some of the speakers have already spoken, have highlighted piracy as a problem. And I'm sharing this graph just for us to know that, even though the lack of monitoring surveillance and control might have inhibited the ability of a lot of the regional navies or regional agencies to actually be able to cut some of these vessels. In fact, this is something that maritime enforcement agents have cited that there is a correlation between illicit activities at sea, including illegal oil bunkering for example, or illegal fishing and piracy and amrobracy. And I'm sharing this data, just for you to see on the chart here the first one is relates to panofi frontier, it was attacked on the 24th of June, and of the coast of Ghana in 2020. While it was attacked, you have to look at this map that looked that sort of highlights its activities or movement. It has an authorization to fishing Ghana, right. And whilst this particular incident might not be directly linked to illegal fishing because it cannot be proven, because if it is not what the Navy is looking at or if they're not working with the Fisheries Department they might not necessarily be able to point this out. And we can see the way that is operating out and about different areas might suggest or raises suspicion, but this is not proving in terms of whether it was attacked at the time, whether it was engaging in illegal activities or illegal fishing because it has not been investigated. And that highlights the reason why we should be looking very carefully about the potential link between illegal fishing and piracy, for example, is the attack on February 25th, sorry, February 7, 2001 of the coast of Gabon. Le Panjiu 809 was attacked in the border between Gabon and São Tomé. It doesn't have a license authorization to fishing in São Tomé. It has, it's flying the flag of Gabon, but interesting thing is that it was around an MPA, a marine protected area in Gabon, it shouldn't be fishing there, it shouldn't be there on a good day. But again, it is not proving that it's fishing illegally because I do not know whether the investigation is actually carried forward, because it might be that it's not within the remit of the Navy to do this. But the possibility that vessels that might be engaging in illegal fishing are actually captured and as in the case of this particular vessel used subsequently to attack other vessels is one of the reason why even looking at it for beyond the trend that it poses on the environment. I would actually also be looking at it from the perspective of, if we actually succeed in combating illegal fishing, could we also succeed in reducing the extent of piracy attack globally, not only in the Gulf of Guinea, and this is why I've highlighted this. And so Hialun Peng is also one that is what is noteworthy, because it was rescued by the Nigerian Navy through collaboration with the Ivorian and the Yaudi architecture. But something that is very interesting about this is that this actually happened through collaboration between the fisheries agency in Kodobua, supported by the fisheries tax force of the fisheries committee for West Central Gulf of Guinea. Another interesting thing is that in June, the Nigerian government, Trunimasa, would subsequently find Heifan Loong for being around Nigerian EEZ so many times with its AIS switched off, that is its vessel monitoring system switched off. It didn't have any business been in that area because it doesn't have fisheries arrangement to fish in Nigeria. I don't have time but I just want to talk quickly about what the government are doing to solve this problem or trying to address this problem. Unfortunately, still in the spirit of talking about human security, a lot of the effort to address this problem ends up targeting the already vulnerable. For example, we see the Ghanaian government suspending premise feel for four villages because they were supposedly engaging in light fishing when last year in 2020, the same government was given authorization to tuna vessels to actually break the law and maybe to allow the same tuna vessel to allow tuna fishing fleet to engage in light fishing, something that is illegal by law. The people protested and of course with the Navy intervening, the government had to cancel that decision. We also see this in Bangladesh, for example, whereby effort to ensure the regeneration of depleting fish stock is targeting on the local people, they're already vulnerable by instituting fishing ban, something that I've been trying in Ghana. But the fact that these people are the ones that are already vulnerable, they are targeted, they are not compensated and they are expected to stay at home for a month, two months without doing anything. This actually presents an opportunity for this vicious cycle of vulnerability, possibly resulting in criminality to actually try it because criminal actors are likely to take advantage of people that have the knowledge of the sea that are vulnerable and also looking for ways to make ends meet. And so what is the solution without taking photo of your time? Maritime enforcement is absolutely important. The use of armament is very important because there are a lot of criminal actors that are actually in this business just because of the shared greed and the fact that they can make money from it. At the same time, we cannot solve this problem, looking at it from a holistic perspective, without centering coastal well-being, without centering the need for environmental conservation. And this would only happen when we also recognize that the local communities have a role to play in solving this problem. Local CSOs have a very important role to play in solving these problems. Thank you so much for listening and I apologize for taking so much of your time. If you have questions for her, please enter them into the chat now and I'll be happy to ask them of her at the conclusion of our third panelist. Our next panelist is Rear Admiral Scott Clinton, United States Coast Guard Assistant Commodant for Response Policy. In this role, he is responsible for U.S. Coast Guard policy in seven operational mission areas, including law enforcement and maritime security. Immediately preceding this assignment, excuse me, Admiral Clinton served as the Coast Guard liaison officer to the newly established interagency transnational organized crime strategic division. Welcome Admiral Clinton. Well, good morning and thank you very much to the Naval War College for inviting me to speak about this very important mission set for the Coast Guard. And really, really appreciate the opportunity to network not just with U.S. colleagues who are interested in this field but international as well because this really is a team effort. The Coast Guard itself has been engaged in fisheries enforcement for 150 years and that's enforcing the laws of fisheries throughout our 3 million square mile exclusive economic zone and in areas key areas of the high seas. I think for purposes of my brief discussion, I would, I really appreciate the doctor's detail in summary of the concern and the security concern involved with IUU. We share her passionate concern about this issue and I think through all your speakers, it's been noted that this is not just confined to Africa, but this is a worldwide concern. And so what I would like to do is just spend a few minutes talking about what the U.S. Coast Guard and our interagency colleagues are doing to work together to address this across the road. So, the way this began actually was in Newport Rhode Island in many ways because Admiral Schultz, our current commandant when he was area commander, visited the International Sea Power Symposium as our Coast Guard representative. And as usually happened in that forum, the Navy's and Coast Guard's normally would approach us on the largest maritime concerns in our field of work and the Coast Guard and typically that was search and rescue, drug interdiction, counterterrorism, piracy. And that was kind of what we were prepared to be approached on. And in that case in that year, there was, it was noted that there was a large, large increase in interest in discussing IUU and how the nations and the Navy's and Coast Guard's could band together to counter what was a growing concern across the world. And so when he became commandant and he continued to receive that type of feedback from our international partners, he guided us to draft and build a strategic outlook for IUU fisheries. And then subsequently we also drafted an implementation plan on your screen. You'll see a reference at the bottom, these are actually available online. These are meant to be collaborative documents, not just for ourselves, but for our partners that paints our way ahead in the way in which we intend to address IUU. Within that strategic outlook, I'll just briefly outline three lines of effort. The first one is, and we always say we're focused on intelligence driven operations. The first line of effort is to promote targeted, effective and intelligence driven enforcement operations. This is a unique challenge. I would say that the US does not have all the information it needs for this. So, is this is not only coordinating information sharing across the interagency, and across our intelligence community, but in many ways, it's about building the collaborative systems for the private sector and NGOs to share information as well. In many ways, the most important information as we saw in the doctor's presentation will come from other sources of information that we can collaborate and share to build a common international picture of the prevalence of IUU fishing concerns. The second line of effort is to counter predatory and ill-responsible state behavior, and we believe any nation that has the flagged vessels that sail around the world are also responsible if those flagged states are operating outside the norms of expected behavior internationally. And so how can we, when we recognize irresponsible state behavior, first work with the flag nation that's responsible for those vessels and let them know what we are seeing and what other nations are reporting as far as ill-responsible behavior. But also, if in fact there is not a response, how do we collaborate internationally to bring pressure and to change the behavior of those vessels so that they enter into expected norms of behavior and comply with international agreements that pertain to fisheries and other activities at sea. And so our third line of effort is to expand the multilateral fisheries engagement cooperation. As we know we have regional fisheries management organizations, and they have long-standing agreements internationally that allow us to collaborate in fisheries enforcement and monitoring. We are working with all our international partners and have spoken with many of them that would like to see increased provisions for boardings on the high seas for us all to mutually ensure that we have fair grounds for fishing and that all fishermen at sea in the high seas and in other territorial seas are conforming to international standards for fishing. And I think, you know, we see that through boardings, through increased enforcement as the doctor talked to in the end of her presentation, through increased presence on these vessels, we will understand more about the patterns of illicit and poor behavior of the IUU actors at sea so that we can take additional steps to address it. And so I think the theme that you see here is there's no one nation, there's no one agency that can address this alone. It's going to have to be worked through collaboration of all nations and really take on this issue. I think throughout your talk you see the extent and the concern that's building and it's only getting worse as time goes on. One of the larger approaches we take is to build through international multilateral but also bilateral agreements to allow us to work with nations to help them as well for enforcement of concern of IUU concerns around their waters, but also sometimes with their agreement and their teams embarked in collaboration with us help them enforce the law within their own waters, which is helpful internationally since fish don't have passports and the impact of illicit fishing anywhere can impact the global stock everywhere. So we've internationally we've we've had a whole lot of international initiatives, really across the world to include Africa. Since 2011 and working with our African partners, we've we've cited more than 120 violations of domestic fisheries law inside their exclusive economic zones and partner with those nations. In the Atlantic we recently sailed one of our newest vessels down there and collaborated it with the region on on IUU fishing in that region and really generated a lot of interest and good diplomatic discussion from their their efforts down there. Noting my colleague on the panel from Ecuador, we have worked with Ecuador closely in the area of IUU in collaboration and the real gem that they have their national treasure of the Galapagos Islands and their easy that is so important to the region, and we hope to continue to collaborate with Ecuador on that in the coming coming years in the Pacific Island countries we had Operation Blue Pacific which worked with the Solomon Islands Papua New Guinea, the Federated States of Micronesia. And then, of course, we always do the North Pacific Guard each year with Canada, Japan, South Korea, and our own agency of NOAA. The vehicles that we use to coordinate domestically within the United States is the SAFE Act. And so, I'm the Coast Guard chair on that with my colleagues and NOAA that lead that effort they're actually 21 federal agencies, we meet regularly to take action to curtail the global trade and food seafood products derived from IUU fishing. And the effort in that working group includes a whole of government effort for for data sharing as we discussed here, support of priority regions increased transparency and traceability across global seafood supplies, improved global operations, and to prevent the IUU fishing profits as a financial source for transnational criminals. And that's a very important organization very helpful organization and so, so that that's basically the framework and I look forward to the questions and again, really appreciate this very important discussion against a mission that our commandant has had us very focused on. And thank you again, I'll turn it back over to the moderator. Thank you. Thank you, Admiral Clinton. Our third panelist today is Commander Carlos Garzón of the Ecuadorian Navy. Commander Garzón has served as commanding officer of two Ecuadorian marine battalions located near Ecuadorian north and south borderlines. Thank you for joining our panel today, Commander Garzón. Good afternoon, everyone. Let me share my screen. Can you see it, please? Yes. Then it's an honor to be here. I will begin just located my country. We are in South America and the Pacific Ocean between Colombia and Peru and because of the Galapagos Islands and its unique economic exclusive sun plus the continental EEC, we are four times and more water than land and then that is so important for our resources. Today, I'll be address about the importance of the fisheries in my country, the problem, the solution and the experiences and you will see the solution not just as a cost score effort, not even as a navy but as countries of all sources of power, which is diplomatic, informational, military and also economic. The last one is not going to be presented by my country experience because we are still working to have this as a source of power. So why is important the fishery in Ecuador? The main income from exportation, the first place is oil and the second and third is always a fight against agriculture and fisheries. In agriculture, the premium products of Ecuador is the banana and coffee, but in fisheries the main products are tuna and shrimp. And speaking about tuna, we are the world's second fleet country and approximately around 1100 fisheries ships or more than 20 gross registered tonnage which allowed them to industrially fish in our economic exclusive zones, but also we have more like 2000 artisanal fishing boats that they creates the work for the people in the coastal region. We are the world's second tuna export country and last year we produced $1,500 million. Also 1.6% of our gross domestic product comes from the fisheries and it allows to enable more than 500 industries around fisheries. So why is it important the fisheries because it's a source of food, a source of work, ship your development and exportation incomes also, so it's important for us. The problem as an operational factors will address the space and then we have the coastal of Ecuador, the Galapagos Island, you can see the red dots around the economic exclusive zone. These are other countries fisheries fleet. The problem is when they go inside of our economic exclusive zone. So we have to monitor in them. And also sometimes the turn off their identification devices and becomes like dark vessels. Another point in space is the distance, the distance between the western side of continental Ecuador to the western side of Galapagos Islands is 640 nautical miles. Plus the 200 nautical miles, it's around 840 nautical miles and on that over resources Navy and Coast Guard should be monitoring this problem. In the time factor with the historical data the fishes moves following the roads of their sources of food so we can see for example in January the concentration of the fishers are in south continental Ecuador near to Peru in May is the opposite north of my country and near to Colombia and next month, for example, they are the most concentrated fisheries are in the farthest point of my economic exclusive son. So the force, what is our main threat, the, the fleets that are doing illegal fishing and one of the most important thread is the Chinese fishing fleet, because it's big and because we have a history of having them around our, our economic exclusive sons. So we address the critical vulnerabilities, they have a long sea lines of communications, they need fuel and they need refrigerators to carry their products to their mainland. Thinking about the tankers and their reefers we monitor them and we know that they normally goes in and out the mainland China but often, as you will see in the right picture, they go also with South America countries also and not only in the Pacific but also in the Atlantic. So what's the solution. Once again, it's, it will be a dime solution in the diplomatic sector. We are having coordination between our ministry of production external commerce inversions and fisheries with organizations such as food and agriculture organization, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, the permanent commission for the South Pacific, the South Pacific regional fisheries management organization, and we are part of the international plan of action to prevent deter and eliminate illegal unreported and unregulated fishing. Also, with our ministry of external affairs we are having a diplomacy conversations with the government of China. The solution is sharing information also we share information internal for our own fishery fleets, the Ecuadorian Navy share the vessel monitoring and the statutory documents. The Undersecretary of the Fishery Resources also share the fishing permits and the fishing trustability over oil companies, public share the gas stations for boats, the amount of fuel that provides to the boats, and the internal rent services share the building for the fuel. With this information we can monitor if something is wrong with this kind of information we could track and follow not just illegal fishing but the other illegal activities. What happened with the international fleets? We have projects in the informational source of power against that IEU fishing. For example, with World Wildlife Foundation and Global Fishing Watch as an NGO, but also with partner nations. In this example, with Canada and United States, for example, with Canada, we have a cooperative situational and informational integration system. And with the United States, we allow to use over Galapagos as a place for the operation of the P3 Orion for maritime patrol and reconnaissance and to have the information that they provide for us. In the military factor or source of power, the surveillance and control capacity is not just monitoring but also to go out with our resources. And we are helped with the ISS systems and for our international fleet, we use the ISS with satellite capacity to monitor the international fleet. Once again, it's not just monitoring from a desk, we have to be there. So for that, we have operational response centers which use Coast Guard, Navy ships, naval aviation, even Marines if we have to do a non-cooperative abordance of the ship. And we also track the critical capabilities which are the tankers and the reefers, as I told you, and since 2019, we develop a virtual exercise multinational, which is called Galapax with our allies and partner nations to begin thinking about what to do in the case of this illegal unreported and declared fishing will become a regional and world threat. So that's why we do it. And last thing I will address is experiences or last experience with that with one ship from China, it was a realer, it was captured in 2017. It was 13 nautical miles of one of Galapagos Islands, so Navy sent a Coast Guard and a helicopter. And as soon as they aboard the ship, they found sharks and fins of the sharks. So they processes the ship, right now the ship is donated for the Ecuadorian Navy and the crew is in jail because of the environmental crime. This is an example of how can we address just with our nation effort. But once again, if we have to deal with it, we have to do all sources of power, not just an effort of one country. And thank you for your time and waiting for the questions. Thank you very much commander goes on. And thank you to all our panelists for your time and insight today. I invite all of our speakers to go on camera for our question and answer session for the next few minutes. And the tenants have not already done so I invite you to start posting your questions or continue to post your questions within the chat. We do have one question to start off with and this will be for you Admiral Clinton ties a little bit into the diplomatic solution that commander Garzan spoke to just recently with the first line of effort in the strategic outlook. What role does information sharing play in IUU fishing and how does the Coast Guard envision that information will be shared, and how will it have an impact. Sir. Well, thank, thank you for the question. And that's, again, probably the most important line of effort is to get the Intel and info sharing. Right. And, and it's so part of that is within the interagency the US interagency whenever we have a new mission set. Consider how are we going to share our information between our own agencies, but in the IUU framework as we heard the commander talk about there are many other sources of information that frankly in some ways are better informed as to the illegal activity in the immigration space. Those include NGOs he mentioned global fishing watch and the world, World Wildlife Federation. Also other nations Ecuador obviously is very informed as to what's happening in the region, as far as fishing, fishing. And so, how do we combine that information in a collaborative platform where everyone can enrich the understanding of the problem set and share that information and provide transparency for where the fishing fleet is where irregular activities such as when ship turns off. It's a is just outside of the easy of Ecuador or some other nation, so that we can understand where the illicit fishing is happening. And together, use our resources to to go ahead and board and document that activity. In the case Ecuador showed some real success stories with with their ability to board within their own seas they have their obviously have their authorities over their easy and and and that's a successful outcome, or maybe that we approach the vessel. And then we share it with the flag state through diplomatic channels. The one one thing of note I just offered everyone is that we are working with both the private sector NGOs, but also with our own agencies in fact the Defense Innovation Unit right now, as a contest for building a collaborative platform on how all these entities could share information and look for anomalous behavior that may be indicative of IUU out there so so I thank you for the question very important one and I think that's how we would get after that. Thank you, Admiral. Our next question is for Commander Garzon and it's very much in the Naval War College joint military operations. According to your operational approach to IUU fishing. What do you see as Ecuador Center of Gravity, and what do you see as the Chinese fleets Center of Gravity. Thank you for the question. And the Center of Gravity to address the illegal fishing will be the Korean Ecuadorian Navy itself because it has the capabilities of patrolling in our own economic exclusives on and our threat Center of Gravity where will be the fishery fleets that are doing illegal EU fishing to and to address that threat, we can do it by our own sources of power just to as I address in the example with the Chinese ship to through the critical capabilities, but if we have or we want to defeat it, it will be a regional approach where participation the cooperation of the other nations and it's the same information and resources and we began doing the Gallup exercise in 2019 I hope you will continue and go to prepare for the for this threat. Thank you. Thank you very much. I would continuing on the discussion regarding regional architectures and regional maritime organizations. You mentioned in your comments that there were six Western African countries suffering high rates of monetary loss. Do you see continued opportunities, particularly for that region with partnerships for regional architectures and regional maritime organizations and how those can be employed. Yes, absolutely. And, and this is actually my way of trying to emphasize the need for a more comprehensive response to security threats at sea, rather than the continuous centering on piracy. So, for example, the case of the heirloom thing that with the help of the Nigerian Navy and the Iranian Navy, with the connection or communication between the architecture that actually resulted in the rescuing and capturing of pirates and the first ever successful legal persecution of pirates, with the support of UNODC, you know with the legal support that they provided is testament of how the holistic approach can work, how the region can take advantage of the architecture that is already existing and then working with fisheries organization and collectively working holistically and not focusing only on piracy, but focusing holistically on threats at sea, whereby the Navy can be ready to work to capture pirates, but at the same time actively engaging with fishing agencies to communicate and take advantage of the vessels or the assets they have to capture vessels that might have been engaging in these activities at sea outside piracy. So I think there's definitely an opportunity to take advantage of the collaboration within the architecture. Thank you. Thank you very much. And the last question I'll open either to Admiral Clendenin or Commander Garzon is what role does Interpol play in sharing information and prosecuting IUU fishing in the international arena. Yes, I had my mute on. So, so I think Interpol is going to be a very important organization as we go ahead in this mission space they have already formed several, several work groups on IUU and sharing information as well as practices and investigations that they have already made against IUU companies and fishing interests, but I can tell you that we in the Coast Guard have invested in that that we're going to send a full time Coast Guard service agent to be a part of Interpol specifically for the purpose to participate in those work groups. I think that'll be a very important collaborative tool. And I didn't mean to step in front of my Ecuadorian colleague if he has a response on that. Thank you Admiral, I just add as your response that the key is to have a trust between our nations, our governments and then to share in information, wherever the source it is, and also to address the common threat so IUU fishing is a common threat that it will affect us all, not just Africa countries, not just South American countries, when we don't have what to eat, it will concern the whole world. Thank you. Thank you. Our time today has come to an end, and we appreciate the time. Each of our distinguished panelists have taken to share their perspectives on IUU fishing opportunities for regional collaboration and global collaboration, and the challenges facing human issues. This concludes the panel, and we return to our conference organizer, Commander Cameron for comments before the break. Thank you so much to Michelle Shalip, Rear Admiral, Clinton, and Ife Okoku for Yarwood and Carlos Garzón for talking to us in depth about IUU fishing. Overall, I'd like to thank all the speakers and moderators for our morning it's been a truly rich learning environment for our global audience today. I'd like to welcome everyone back tomorrow at 0830 for a talk with Miss Michelle Struck, Principal Director of Stability and Humanitarian Affairs at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. After her keynote will have two important panels, one on unsafe mixed migration and modern slavery, and the second one on cultural heritage protection in the maritime environment. I'd like to welcome my conference co organizer and the Captain Jerome Elivi Chair of Economic Geography, Professor Christia Sparrow, as well as the Naval War College Foundation because they both sponsored this event today. That concludes the event for today. Thank you so much for joining us.