Indonesia claims to have detected at least 13 Vietnamese patrol boats holding station on the official "continental shelf" boundary between Indonesia and Vietnam in the Natuna Sea this year, with the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry alleging they were there to assist Vietnamese vessels to fish illegally in disputed waters nearby.

Mas Achmad Santosa, the head of Satgas 115, the ministry’s illegal fishing task force, said officials concluded the vessels were Vietnamese patrol boats after analyzing data sourced from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) — an automatic tracking system that monitors transponders on ships and is used by vessel traffic services — and the ministry's Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), as well as its COSMO-Skymed Radar Imagery.

“Our analysis shows that these are patrol vessels of the Vietnamese government and they are positioned on the continental shelf boundary. There are two possible reasons behind this: It is a form of intimidation or these ships are ready to guard Vietnamese fishing vessels that operate in the [overlapping] waters [of the mutually claimed exclusive economic zones (EEZ)],” he said during a press briefing on Monday evening.

He said by sending patrol boats to that location Vietnam has violated the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which mandates provisional arrangements if conflicting claims for EEZs have not yet been settled and bans moves that could harm negotiations.

On the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Bangkok in late June, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc agreed to accelerate the ongoing negotiations over the delimitation of their EEZs, while at the same time to start fresh talks to establish provisional guidelines to prevent fishing-related conflicts.

An EEZ is not a territorial sea where a country can wield full sovereignty, but rather an area where it has certain sovereign rights over the natural resources, including fish, that exist in the water columns.

The delimitation of the Indonesian EEZ's boundary with Vietnam's is one of five active border negotiations Jakarta is currently engaged in. The talks have been going on for years without much progress.

The two countries previously reached an agreement on a so-called continental shelf boundary in 2003 — after 30 years of negotiations.

The Vietnamese patrol boats in question, according to Achmad, formed a stationary cluster along the Indonesia-Vietnam continental shelf boundary line in the Natuna Sea. However, the deployment of the patrol boats could jeopardize the EEZ negotiations because they were holding station in the disputed waters both countries claimed as part of their EEZs, Achmad said. “And if we have not resolved [the dispute], then they are not allowed to be there," he added.

The northeastern parts of the Natuna Sea are known to be vulnerable to intrusions by illegal foreign fishing vessels, particularly Vietnam-flagged boats that have often been escorted by Vietnamese patrol vessels in the past, Achmad said.

According to the ministry’s data as of Sept. 5, 860 fishing boats had permits to operate in the country's Fisheries Management Area (WPP) 711, which covers parts of the Karimata Strait, Natuna Sea and South China Sea, but the VMS data on Indonesian fishing vessels in the Natuna Sea showed none of these vessels were operating in its northeastern waters. COSMO-Skymed radar images, however, showed that there were fishing vessels operating there that were not registered under the VMS or AIS systems.

This immediately raised suspicions that foreign vessels were fishing illegally.

The ministry found that on Wednesday alone, there were 46 vessels operating northeast of Natuna and 44 of them were not detected by either the AIS or VMS and instead were suspected to be illegal fishing boats.

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said the deployment of the patrol boats violated the UNCLOS.

"The presence of Vietnamese patrol boats in the territory of Indonesia is an intimidating action that can influence efforts to reach regional delimitation agreements," she said.

“I will show this data to Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi so she could issue a formal protest through diplomatic channels to the Vietnam government."

In past years, Indonesia has filed numerous protests to Vietnam over incidents involving alleged fishing violations, with the latest being submitted in April over a stand-off between an Indonesian Navy warship and a vessel from Vietnam’s Fisheries Resources Surveillance Agency that had tried to forcibly prevent another Vietnam-flagged boat suspected of fishing illegally in Indonesian waters from being impounded.

Susi said that Vietnam should never station patrol vessels in WPP 711 before Indonesia and Vietnam reach either a provisional agreement or a final deal on EEZ delimitation.

She said she would coordinate with the chief of the Navy and the head of the Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla) to conduct tighter monitoring in WPP 711 to prevent the intrusion of illegal foreign fishing vessels. (ipa)

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