I recently learned that the Chinese trawlers are taking measures to spoof GPS-satellites in African waters when they illegally are trawling for fish there, so that the GPS-system will give the wrong coordinates for their illegal fishing vessels at sea. What can we do about it?
One thing we can do is to institute a tribunal for preventing trawlers from overfishing. And we can trial Chinese and other non-African nations’ trawler captains for fishing at all in African waters.
Second, we can introduce a civilian corps of aviation, policing the waters outside of Africa. There is just the question of where these aircraft will take off from and land. It probably must be from an African nation somewhere. France can contribute there.
But we have to have some way of discerning and ascertain trawler identity. European trawlers could have an identity number on the roof top so that policing aircraft can identify the trawlers. This is just so to see that no European trawlers can fish anything at all in African waters. It is easy to control European trawlers from air, if they have a number on the roof top. The policing aircrafts can have a digital cartulary over all the registered trawlers image shapes and sizes. They can also map unknown trawlers.
One problem with this approach is that the tribunal will become teethless if there is no way of enforcing intervention on Chinese trawlers. But it is a good way of putting all the spotlight on China.
And the European illegal trawler captains will have no way to escape the law.
Roger Klang
Det Tyska Kriget 