U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Harriet Lane returns to home port after 79-day patrol, April 9, 2024. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Senior Chief Petty Officer Charly Tautfest)

The Indo-Pacific Defense Forum, the on-line magazine of US Indo-Pacific Command, provides a review of the history and current status of the shiprider program that is part of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s Theater Security Cooperation initiative, which seeks to enhance regional stability and security.

The Cook Islands and the U.S. established the first shiprider effort in the Indo-Pacific in 2008. The U.S. Coast Guard now has bilateral fisheries law enforcement agreements with 12 Indo-Pacific nations. The pacts enable each nation’s military and/or maritime law enforcement officers to ride aboard the other’s vessels and enforce laws within their respective waters, including exclusive economic zones (EEZ). They are permitted to stop, inspect and detain vessels suspected of illicit maritime activity, particularly illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

This seems to be in response to recent Chinese push back. Both China and the US may be looking toward the possibility of such an agreement being made between the US and the Philippines or Viet Nam. The piece concludes,

“The PRC is increasingly concerned the shiprider program will extend to the Philippines or Vietnam, which are among the nations that reject the PRC’s arbitrary and expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea…”

Such an Agreement might see a US Coast Guard cutter with Philippine shipriders attempting to board and possibly detain Chinese fishing vessels in the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone within the South China Sea in areas also claimed by China.