Monitoring control and surveillance

Monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS), in the context of fisheries, is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations as a broadening of traditional enforcing national rules over fishing, to the support of the broader problem of fisheries management.

Internationally, the basis of law for fisheries management comes from the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Further definition was in the Declaration of Cancun This is complemented by the work of a variety of regional organizations that cover high seas fishing areas. A key concept in international fishing laws is that of the Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends 200 miles (370 km) from the coast of nations bordering on the oceans. EEZ is not a meaningful concept in relatively small seas such as the Mediterranean and Baltic, so those areas tend to have regional agreements for MCS of international waters within those seas.

MCS has aspects distinct from fisheries management, although there is overlap. According to the 2003 FAO paper on Recent Trends, fisheries management consists of:

While MCS, in the basic FAO definitions, does not include enforcement, that category will be included here as part of the means of implementing MCS operations. In MCS discussions, there is a strong emphasis that the success of MCS is not to be measured in number of arrests, but in the level of compliance with presumably reasonable frameworks (i.e., the "control" part of MCS). If a sense of participation in the development of controls, as well as peer pressure, leads to meeting the fisheries management controls without a single arrest, the MCS program is successful.

A 1981 Conference of Experts defined monitoring as " the continuous requirement for the measurement of fishing effort characteristics and resource yields." This was expanded, in a 1993 workshop, to include the measurement of:

According to the 1981 Conference of Experts, control are the "regulatory conditions under which the exploitation of the resource may be conducted." This is usually considered to consist of legislation, regulations, and international agreements. Each of these should describe the management measures required and the requirements that will be enforced. The actual enforcement mechanisms are not part of control.

Management criteria include:

Vessel inspections

Surveillance, according to the 1981 Conference of Experts, are "the degree and types of observations required to maintain compliance with the regulatory controls imposed on fishing activities." The Ghana workshop termed it the "regulation and supervision of fishing activity..." This definition does not clearly include enforcement.

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