EU Fishery Control Will Expand Satellite Surveillanceff
5 July 2006
European Union The European Agency for Fishery Control will count with a new satellite center to monitor the fishing activities of the European fleet. This center will lead the mission to trace permanently the situation and movements of about 5,000 European vessels operating in jurisdictional own areas, as well as those ruled by the North Atlantic Fishing Organization (NAFO). It will even survey the European fishing vessels operating at third countries under the shelter of corresponding fishing agreements.
This space device is included into the regulations of operations, sources and fields disposed by the European Agency in Spain, which was approved by the Ministries of Fishery in April 2005. However it is not yet decided if the national systems of control via satellite, included the Spanish one based in Madrid, will be either integrated together or not in this new center for surveillance, which location is not yet confirmed. Nevertheless, such location could be considered to be placed at the headquarters of the Agency itself, Vigo.
Setting apart that, this methodology of surveillance is not new. The control systems for the European fleets started in 1975 with a pilot project on 120 boats, which has been enlarged and is nowadays fit into the Inmarsat-C. In the case of Spain, the Center of Fishery Control follows up over 1,400 fishing boats, but it is foreseen to reach 1,800. Worldwide-equipped census is 20,000 fishing boats.
The most recent developed system is Galileo, a constellation of 30 satellites launched by the EU that will trace an automatic follow-up of the European fishing and merchant fleet. Until 2010 this task will be done by the North American system GPS-Inmarsat and the Russian platform Glonass. Galileo will cost 3,400 Euro millions and its inclusion is scheduled for year 2010.
