-New System to curb the Impacts
The fisheries sector is greatly threatened by piracy; the impacts of which have created sensation in the media world, much loss to vessel owners, and tremendous anguish and desolation in the lives of relatives of those killed on Guyana’s high seas by pirates. However, the Agriculture Ministry is looking to have the Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS) implemented.
VMS are used in commercial fishing to allow environmental and fisheries regulatory organizations to monitor, minimally, the position, time at a position, and course and speed of fishing vessels. They are a key part of monitoring control and surveillance (MCS) programmes at national and international levels. VMS may be used to monitor vessels in the territorial waters of a country or a subdivision of a country, or in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) that extend 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) from the coasts of many countries.
The most basic function of a VMS is to determine the vessel’s location at a given time, and periodically send this information, usually by satellite, to a monitoring station ashore.
In practice, many of the VMS components also have applicability, along with non-VMS marine electronics, to a wide range of functions aboard a fishing vessel. These include navigation, finding fish, collision avoidance, routine voice and email communications, among others.