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ijian Fishery and Forestry Minister Oseea Naiqamu could not hide his excitement when sharing how his Indonesian counterpart, Susi Pudjiastuti, alluringly influenced global efforts to fight against illegal fishing.

“Susi is a real champion. She led the way [for the campaign] through the Asia-Pacific,” Naiqamu told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting in Jakarta.

In an apparent move to increase global awareness about the sustainable use of fish and other maritime resources, Susi gathered her colleagues from 15 Asia-Pacific countries, plus Norway, the UK and the US, in Jakarta for a meeting to discuss the implementation of a traceability system in the fishery industry.

Representatives from the EU, ASEAN, the Food Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Southeast Asia Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDC) also attended the event.

During the meeting, Susi said that a traceability measure was “mandatory” to all countries in their fishery industries to ensure that all products “are being sold and eaten legally, free from dangerous substances and processed in an environmentally friendly way”.

“It will become mandatory for all countries to provide good quality and safe fish to their people,” Susi said.

Traceability means the ability to follow the production, processing and distribution of a product. It is implemented in the fishery industry as a tool to gain consumer trust by minimizing risk in their products.

Indonesia has a regulation regarding a traceability system in its fishery industry: the 2013 Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister’s Decree on Requirements for Quality Control and Security of Fishery Products. Meanwhile, in a bid to ensure the sustainability of the industry, Susi last year issued two ministerial regulations, one on a prohibition of the use of trawls and seine nets and the other on lobster and crab catching.

But Susi said that this measure was not only critical for a bid to mitigate risks in the global fish and fishery product supply chain, but also a way to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, a subject she had been advocating since she was appointed to be the country’s maritime affairs and fisheries minister in 2014.

Adisorn Prompthep, a director general at Thailand’s Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, said his country was committed to ensuring the sustainability of its maritime resources by reforming its legal system in 2015 to add a traceability measure to the fishery industry and ratifying the FAO’s Port State Measures Agreement.

The agreement, which was also ratified by Indonesia in May, aims to restrict and block the movement of IUU vessels into national and international markets by requiring vessel masters to provide information on the ship identification, fish on board and licenses before being allowed to enter a port. (mos)