VMS technology can monitor commercial fishing vessels

VFA collects data from VMS

Commercial unregulated fishing has caused great harm to Victoria’s marine animals, and the marine ecological environment has been affected. Even though there are many relevant rules and laws to protect Victoria’s marine animals, there are still some commercial fishing vessels that do not overfish in accordance with the law in order to obtain more benefits.
Therefore, in order to protect Victoria’s marine ecosystem, it is particularly important to monitor and track every commercial fishing vessel that goes out to sea in Victoria. Therefore, a good system is needed for real-time monitoring of all commercial fishing vessels going out to sea.
Due to the large number of commercial fishing vessels, in order to facilitate the supervision of commercial fishing, the VFA department requires that commercial fishing vessels must install VMS systems to reduce the damage to marine life caused by commercial fishing.

The VMS device is not designed to be a safety device, the VMS device will be used to provide the VFA with information about the vessel .

Privacy of data be protected

The VFA respects the privacy of commercial fisher’s data and treats this information as confidential. Individual’s information collected is used for compliance and fisheries management purposes and is shared only with external agencies under strict conditions and in accordance with the Fisheries Act 1995.

There are strong legal protections under the Fisheries Act 1995 to prevent unauthorised access to or divulging of this information.

AFMA follows and implements measures to counter cyber security threats as directed by the Australian Cyber Security Centre, a division of the Australian Signals Directorate, and has regular independent security audits to ensure its cyber security stays strong and up to date.

All VMS data is stored in Australia at a facility which meets strict Commonwealth government security standards.