Australians Chasing Pirates Help Them Avoid Dangerous Ice

CANBERRA, Australia, August 21, 2003 (ENS) - An Australian Customs and Fisheries patrol boat Wednesday was forced to radio instructions to help a suspected illegal fishing vessel it is pursuing avoid pack ice in the Southern Ocean. The patrol boat was in hot pursuit of the fishing vessel Viarsa for two weeks before Australian officers felt obliged to save their quarry from the hazards of Antarctic pack ice.

Justice and Customs Minister Senator Chris Ellison said the crew of the patrol boat Southern Supporter provided navigational advice to the Viarsa to help the fishing vessel find its way out of waters dangerously clogged with ice.

Senator Ellison said the suspect vessel Viarsa had headed so far south in the Southern Ocean during the pursuit that it got very close to pack ice extending out from the Antarctic coastline.

A Fisheries officer on board the Southern Supporter maintains visual surveillance of the Viarsa in ice conditions. (Photo courtesy Australian Customs)

Federal Fisheries Minister, Senator Ian Macdonald, said that in 13 days, the two boats had travelled more than 1,900 nautical miles southwest from where the Southern Supporter first began pursuing the Viarsa, believed to be a Uruguayan flagged vessel, inside the Australian Fishing Zone in the sub-Antarctic.

“As of this morning Australian Eastern Standard Time, they are some 1,200 nautical miles south of Cape Town in South Africa,” Senator Macdonald said Wednesday.

Weather conditions in the Southern Ocean are deteriorating again, the Australian Customs Service said today. With both vessels well clear of the ice pack they are under the influence of extreme weather conditions and 50 knot winds. The pursuit is heading northwest through an area dotted with small icebergs.

The South African polar ship SA Agulhas has joined the hunt and is heading on an intercept course towards the Southern Supporter and Viarsa.

Senator Ellison said he is still hopeful that the Viarsa’s skipper would comply with Australia’s request to head to a suitable port and submit his vessel to inspection. “However, until that happens, the Southern Supporter will remain in pursuit,” he said.

Fishing vessel Viarsa in the ice pack in the Southern Ocean. (Photo courtesy Australian Customs)

"This is a significant breakthrough," she said. "We are delighted that many of the countries which are members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) are supporting us in our efforts."

"CCAMLR, of which Australia is one of 24 member countries, is concerned with ensuring the conservation of marine resources and stamping out the illegal fishing of vulnerable species like the Patagonian toothfish," said Dr. Stone.

The Australian government is conducting discussions with several nations, including South Africa and the United Kingdom, who wish to support efforts to require the Viarsa to comply with Australian and international maritime laws.

“For operational reasons, I cannot go into further detail," said Ellison. "What I can say is that the offers of help we are getting from some countries is heartening and demonstrates to me that there is a growing determination to put a stop to illegal fishing.”

The Australian government is prepared to continue the pursuit indefinitely. Fisheries Minister Macdonald said, “We will do whatever it takes, no matter how long it takes, to see that the vessel is thoroughly investigated for suspected breaches of our Fisheries Management Act."

The prize for illegal fishers is the lucrative and tasty Patagonian toothfish, known on restaurant menus as Chilean sea bass. This deep ocean fish lives around seamounts in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, in the southern regions of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and off the southern coasts of Latin America.

Toothfish can live up to 80 years and grow to a length of eight feet. They do not reach sexual maturity until they are 10 years old, making them vulnerable to overfishing.

The Viarsa pursuit is not the only such operation conducted jointly by Australian and South African authorities. In March 2001, the Togo registered vessel South Tomi was pursued by the Southern Supporter for 14 days before being apprehended in waters off South Africa in a joint operation involving the Australian, South African, and French governments.

But regardless of politics or law, or the conservation of threatened marine species, the most fundamental seagoing tradition is the duty of all mariners to go to the aid of persons in peril at sea.

As Douglas Stevenson, director of the Center for Seafarers’ Rights of the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York and New Jersey, told a June 12 session of the Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea at UN Headquarters in New York, "In this ageless practice, that all mariners depend upon, neither race, color, nor religion matter; nationality and politics do not exist, and there are no strangers. Only the simple moral obligation to help a fellow human being in distress at sea remains."