Mentioned in the press this week was the announcement of INTERPOL’s Project Scale at a symposium held at the University of Cape Town (UCT) earlier in the week.

The announcement was made by Eve de Coning of INTERPOL and the project is designed to respond to the R230bn that is lost to illegal fishing each year and was established as a separate unit to fight fishing crime due to its dramatic impact on marine resources. These crimes are not just a local concern, but have become a transnational organised crime.

“We need to understand it in the context of a much larger chain of events,” de Coning said.

It is good to see some of the legal crime fighting organisations getting behind a problem that is not just South African, but a global phenomenon that needs to be addressed globally.