Legitimising Fishing Port Use in the Information Age: Challenges and Potential in China.

The Agreement on Port State Measures and follow-up national and regional implementation measures are well-intentioned to build up global resistance to illegal fishing. As the world’s busiest landing and transit hub, China has recently begun to take action to rein in the negative impacts of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing on its fishing ports. Without treaty ratification and expansive cooperation with other States, that burgeoning effort is nowhere near to greening China’s intrastate and interstate seafood commerce. The widely asserted advantages of information and communication technology signal both an opportunity and challenges for China to overcome its non-ratification and minimal-coordination inertia. Localised and sector-specific trials of electronic monitoring, reporting, and traceability are symbolic of China’s progressive modernisation agenda on fishing port management. Scalability is the next test for electronic port State measures to expand coverage and generate coordinated gains from a holistic closed-loop and information-based paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]