
The Galician company which owns the “Playa Pesmar Uno” arrested last Sunday by the Argentine Coast Guard allegedly for illegal fishing in the South Atlantic, admits the trawler could have involuntarily sailed into the EEZ, because one of the three GPS on board was malfunctioning.

The Falkland Islands Executive Council (its effective Cabinet) agreed late last week a set of budgeting principles for the Government over the coming financial year beginning 1st July 2018. These principles are likely to apply throughout the four year term of the current Legislative Assembly, though will be formally reviewed by the Assembly annually.

A Falkland Islands Summary Court acting Justice of Peace Andrew Brownlee and Leeann Harris handed out a conditional discharge for eighteen months to Spanish fishing captain, Oscar Gomez, while fining his company, Pesquerias Marinenses SA, a total of £5,000, plus court costs of £150. Mr Gomez was also ordered to pay £150 costs.

French fishermen have blocked the ports of Calais and Boulogne in protest at so-called pulse fishing, which uses electrified nets to stun fish. Fishing boats stopped ferries entering or leaving Calais while a roadblock stopped traffic at Boulogne. Calais is a major link between the UK and France used by thousands of tourists and lorries every day.

New Zealand's fishing industry has found itself at odds with conservationists over whether or not the public should be allowed to see the realities of commercial fishing. In the waters around New Zealand - as many countries - animals including sea birds, dolphins, penguins and sea lions are routinely ending up in commercial fishing nets along with the intended catch.

An agreement has been signed by the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) with Premier Oil to secure the use of their Temporary Dock Facility until March 31, 2018. This pilot project is intended to test the market for additional berthing capacity within Stanley Harbor and to facilitate maintenance works on FIPASS.

Sasha Arkhipkin, Senior Fisheries Scientist talks about mass strandings of pilot whales.

A team of Antarctic scientists hopes that an experiment to capture the sound of a single krill will help determine how many individuals of this key Antarctic species are swimming in the Southern Ocean. Researchers from the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) are using echo sounder technology to record the sound of krill specimens of different sizes over a range of frequencies.

Suspending the export of Brazilian fish to the European Union was a hard decision and still not well understood, the interim fisheries minister Eumar Novacki said at a meeting with businessmen from the sector, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA).

The squid fishing season in the South Atlantic, operating with Argentine licenses, has started with good prospects and a moderate optimism of the sector. During the first week jiggers reported daily average catches that oscillated between 28 and 35 tons, according to Pescare, an Argentine fish industry publication. .