Indian captains released |27 March 2015

The captains of two Indian-flagged fishing vessels have been released almost two months after they were intercepted in the Seychelles waters on suspicion of illegal fishing.

According to the Seychelles News Agency, the Attorney General’s office confirmed that the two men –M. Jerine and S. Gracious – were freed on Tuesday March 24, due to a lack of evidence.

Jerine and Gracious were together with 19 other Indian fishermen when the Seychelles Coast Guard intercepted their vessels on January 28.
The captains were left to face prosecution under the Fisheries Act of 1986 after their 19 colleagues had been released and repatriated to India on an Air Seychelles flight on Tuesday March 3.

The SNA writes that according to Attorney General Rony Govinden, after analysing the different elements of the case, the decision was taken to withdraw the charges against the two captains because their satellite navigation system or Global Positioning System (GPS) showed that their vessels were outside of the Seychelles territorial waters.

"The data available from the GPS of one of the two boats showed that they were at the border of the Seychelles territorial waters. The GPS of the second boat was not working. All the movements of the two vessels were outside our waters. According to the captains, their GPS was not calibrated properly,” said Mr Govinden, adding that these elements would have weakened the prosecution’s case.

As regards to the vessels’ contents, a total of 800 kilogrammes of fish were found with one of the boats containing 200 kilogrammes of fish.

The vessels – Rehoboth and Jersh-Max – were intercepted near the island of Desroches after local fishermen alerted the Seychelles Coast Guard that they had been spotted pulling up their nets.

According to Mr Govinden, the fishermen could not say exactly if what the Indian fishermen were pulling up were fishing nets or the anchor.

"The presence of fishing vessels in the Seychelles waters is not prohibited, it was up to us to prove that they had committed an illegal act," said Mr Govinden.

The Fisheries Act was recently amended in January this year to reflect Seychelles' ratification of various regional and international treaties and legal instruments to prevent illegal fishing.

Under the new terms of the Act, penalties for illegal fisheries range in severity based on the size of the boat suspected of infringing the law, but can carry a maximum penalty of over R31 million (around US $2.3 million) for large vessels of over 50 metres in length.