Asian Diver – March 2018

29

GARY STOKES is the Asia Director for

Sea Shepherd Global. Originally from

the UK, he has lived in Hong Kong for 28

years and has spent the past 15 years

exposing and opposing the shark fin

industry. Gary also heads Sea Shepherd

Dive, working to build a report network to

give Sea Shepherd eyes on the ground in

some of the world’s more remote places.

http://www.seashepherd.org

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continued to work with the PNTL to
build the case against Hong Long with
our legal team, while also notifying
the flag states. This was another
shady area as the vessels were flying
the Chinese flag when we met them,
but in our communications with the
Indonesian Fisheries Ministery, 13 of
the 15 were still flagged Indonesian,
yet on boarding and inspecting their
fishing documents, they were listed
as East Timor flagged.

This is one issue with IUU (illegal,

unregulated and unreported) fishing

vessels: They often have multiple

names, flags and ownerships, making it

very hard to track down and prosecute.

Around 8pm, one of the vessels

started to move. We hit the

spotlights and raced towards it,

hailing them on the VHF

radio in Chinese, “Stop your

engines immediately,

and anchor!”

In this case, we salute the Timorese

authorities for their actions so far to

protect their national interests and six

months on, the fleet of shark hunting

boats are still rafted up together in the

bay near Dili. Their fate is coming and

we hope that the Timorese prosecutor,

armed with the evidence gathered by

the PNTL and Sea Shepherd, can end

their fishing careers permanently. AD