The third workshop of the European Coast Guard Functions Forum (ECGFF) on "Multipurpose Maritime Operations" (MMO) held in Catania, Sicily, Italy from 3 to 5 June, highlighted the coordination between the Italian Coast Guard, the Guardia di Finanza, and the cooperation with Italian Navy.
EFCA has participated to the second joint fisheries monitoring operation in West Africa in 2019, organized by the SRFC as part of the PESCAO program. That operation, called “KUTA”, was an aeronautical and maritime surveillance operation coordinated by the SRFC and in which the Member States concerned cooperated to detect illegal fishing activities which did not comply with the conservation and management rules in force.
As part of the project PESCAO, two workshops organised by EFCA on the analysis and preliminary recommendations resulting from the Fisheries Committee for the Western Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) and the Sub-regional Fisheries Commission (SRFC) Member Countries’ legal review were held on 22 and 23 May 2019 at SRFC headquarters in Dakar, Senegal.
The main objective of the workshops was to present the analysis and preliminary recommendations resulting from the FCWC and SRFC Member Countries’ legal review carried out by an external expert contracted by EFCA.
The European Fisheries Control Agency was present at the European Commission Stand of the Seafood 2019.
The Agency provided two informative sessions and interacted with different stakeholders in this major fisheries event.
It was also an occasion to share with the public the latest graphic material documenting EFCA’s work to promote fisheries compliance in the European Union.
EFCA’s chartered patrol vessel, the Lundy Sentinel, was equipped yesterday with pollution response equipment provided by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and has subsequently carried out an oil pollution drill in the bay of Vigo. The EFCA’s operational team and the vessel crew are made familiar with this new functionality. As a result, EFCA’s patrol vessel is ready to support Member States for pollution response operations and will be added to EMSA’s network of stand-by oil spill response vessels.
6 April, Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri opened the annual European Coast Guard Event in Świnoujście, Poland. This is the second such event jointly organised by Frontex, the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).
EFCA celebrated its 32nd Administrative Board meeting and adopted its Annual Report for 2018. 2018 was a year of intense activity, marking the tenth anniversary of the EFCA in Spain (Vigo). Throughout last year, EFCA combined its core tasks of operational coordination and fisheries control with its contribution to the EU Coast Guard cooperation. These were the main highlights:
The Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) intends to award a supply contract of Equipment for a Regional Fisheries Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Centre (RC MCS) incorporating the pooled data of the FCWC Member States (Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria and Togo), Third Countries and other parties, from their Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), Automatic Identification Service (AIS) and other sources such as Vessel Traffic Systems (VTS), Earth Satellite Observation (EO) etc.
In the framework of the EU cooperation PESCAO project, a joint fisheries surveillance operation to detect illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing was just undertaken, the operation Alexandre Baptista. Under the coordination of the Subregional Fisheries Commission (SRFC) and with the technical and human support from EFCA, the joint operation brokered cooperation between Mauritania, Cabo Verde and Senegal. With the Coordination Centre in Senegal, representatives from all participating countries collected and exchanged fisheries information data.
Technical Assistance to ECOWAS for Improved Regional Fisheries Governance in Western Africa Programme (PESCAO, Component 1).