§8014 Expansion of Existing Mechanisms to Combat Iuu Fishing

Summary

Federal leaders from the State Department, USAID, the Coast Guard’s parent department, Defense, Commerce, the Justice Department, and other agencies must look for ways to fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by expanding current tools and partnerships. That means using shiprider agreements more for anti‑IUU work and making new ones with priority flag states and countries in priority regions; adding the task to the Combined Maritime Forces; adding anti‑IUU exercises to yearly at‑sea DoD/Coast Guard drills; and creating partnerships like the Oceania Maritime Security Initiative and the Africa Maritime Law Enforcement Partnership in other priority regions. The Director of National Intelligence must lead a governmentwide effort to share IUU fishing data and related transnational crime information inside government and, where appropriate, with other countries, NGOs, or the private sector. The effort should use big data tools and machine learning to analyze activity in priority regions and elsewhere.