WWF Meeting Hears US Lacks Agents to Investigate IUU Claims
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Baltimore Sun] By Catherine Rentz - March 3, 2015
Three recently retired senior federal agents expressed concern last week about the lack of resources to investigate the black market fishing industry in meeting sponsored by WWF.
Their message came weeks before the Obama administration is expected to issue recommendations to better combat seafood fraud and what is known as "IUU," or illegal, unreported and unregulated fish.
"There are more people in this room thinking about IUU than doing IUU [investigations]," Scott Doyle, former assistant special agent in charge of the Northeast region for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said to a group of people gathered at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C.
As of December 2014, NOAA had 93 special investigators nationwide — fewer than the number of officers in the Ocean City Police Department. The number of agents trained to uncover complex seafood fraud has declined by more than a third since 2008.
The United States, one of the largest fish importers in the world, helps to drive illegal fishing across the world, according to Michele Kuruc, the World Wildlife Fund's vice president for marine policy....
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