Sometimes you need to back away from the details to take a look at the larger picture. Sept. 17, the Commandant released the “Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing Strategic Outlook”. There have been a number of reports that indicate the Coast Guard is taking this seriously and in fact started working the plan even before it was published.

On Sept. 3 we had a report of USCGC Bertolf’s joint patrol with the Ecuadorian navy off Galapagos Islands, August 25-29.

Sept. 22 we had a report that USCGC Waesche had had a fire on Sept. 20, while on deployment to the Western Pacific .

Sept. 23, we got this report of cooperative fisheries enforcement with the Royal Bahamian Defence Forces, Coast Guard, RBDF seize more than 12,000 lbs. of illegal catch off Bahamas

Oct.7 we got a report that USCGC Douglas Munro had just completed a two month patrol in the North Pacific, not an ALPAT, Operation North Pacific Guard 2020.

Oct. 8 we got this report indicating that the Coast Guard would continue to do capacity building in Africa. Navy, Coast Guard Keep Up Operations in Africa.

And most recently, Oct. 24, we learned that not only would we be “strategically homeporting significantly enhanced Fast Response Cutters … in the western Pacific,” but that basing cutters in America Samoa is being considered. “US to base Coast Guard ships in western Pacific to tackle China”

Taken together, these seem to indicate that the Coast Guard is taking on Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) fishing, particularly Chinese IUU fishing, which is the most egregious, not only in the US EEZ, but also internationally in a cooperative manner.

The line from Jaws comes to mind, I think we are going to need a bigger Coast Guard.