Republished from Radio New Zealand, 11 August 2018

A just completed Pacific operation to combat illegal fishing found no breaches of the region’s rules.

The exercise, the third this year and called Operation Island Chief, aimed to detect, deter, report and/or apprehend potential illegal, unregulated or unreported fishing activity.

Using boats and aircraft it covered more than 16.5 million square kilometres of ocean and found no infringements or breaches.

The Pacific’s 10 Forum Fisheries Agency member nations were involved, along with Australia, New Zealand, France and the United States.

Photo: Francisco Blaha