The Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) has set up the Command and Control Center to operate in collaboration with the Fisheries Monitoring Center (FMC) under the Department of Fisheries and Thailand Maritime Enforcement Coordinating Center (Thai – MECC), in deploying aircraft to verify targets at sea during daytime and night time up to 20 hours continuously. The FMC and the Thai – MECC control and order the aircrafts to detect fishing vessels which are found to be conducting illegal activities as well as to support the coordination among the ground units and the air units to identify and cross-check the target’s location notified by the vessel monitoring system (VMS) for fishing vessels and the automatic identification system (AIS) used in commercial vessels. The RTAF conducted the assessment of the aircraft’s capability to detect illegal fishing vessels in Thai waters during 11 - 15 June 2018.

          The RTAF has developed sensor devices to be attached to the RTAF’s aircraft, and has also identified guidelines to target illegal fishing activities in four areas i.e. A1 - the Eastern coastal areas, A2 – the upper Southern coastal areas, A3 – the central part of the Gulf of Thailand, and A4 – the lower Southern coastal areas. Different sets of aircraft are assigned to each area including fighter aircrafts and unmanned aerial vehicles.

          The preliminary result of the operation was the detection of several serious offences including an oil tanker dumping its waste into the sea, which was subsequently arrested on the spot by the Thai – MECC Area 1, a fishing vessel failing to switch on its VMS and was exposed by the cross-checking of the VMS signal and the location detected by the aircraft, and a commercial fishing vessel caught fishing in an area restricted to artisanal fisheries along the coast of Chantaburi Province in the Eastern region. Such activity was detected by the FMC and subsequently informed the RTAF’s Command and Control Center to send an aircraft to collect evidence in the above-mentioned area which led to the prompt arrest. Moreover, a fishing vessel equipped with anchovy purse seiner was found operating at night time which violated the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives’ Notification and was duly prosecuted.

          From 22 operating flights, 63.5 hours of flight time in total, the aircraft equipped with the sensor devices could detect and identify 160 targets. The sensor devices have the capability to examine the vessels’ behaviours, along with identifying the date, time, and location in the designated area during daytime and night time as well as clearly specifying the vessel identifier. All of this data is an essential evidence and supportive information for the concerned authorities in the prosecution of offenders.

         The assessment of the aircraft’s capability to detect illegal fishing vessels by the RTAF is an important foundation for further developing the network-centric maritime detecting system which unites forces of the Department of Fisheries, the Royal Thai Navy, and the RTAF to support a more effective fight against the illegal fishing and the abuse of labour on fishing vessels.