Quad team up to track ‘dark shipping’ and illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific
- Security pact members to pool data to monitor activity in their waters
- China says it has always met its international obligations and warns others not to make unfounded accusations
The White House said on Tuesday that the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness aimed to build “a faster, wider, and more accurate maritime picture of near-real-time activities in partners’ waters”.
Over the next five years, the Quad members – the United States, Japan, Australia and India – will share unclassified data gathered by a combination of Automatic Identification System signals from ships and radio-frequency technologies.
“This initiative will transform the ability of partners in the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region to fully monitor the waters on their shores and, in turn, to uphold a free and open Indo Pacific,” the White House said.
The system will connect existing surveillance centres, including two in India and Singapore, as well as the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency in the Solomon Islands and the Pacific Fusion Centre in Vanuatu. The latter two are backed by Australia.
The partnership was announced as leaders of the Quad security grouping met for their second in-person summit in Tokyo, where they also pledged to further cooperate on areas ranging from coronavirus vaccines to infrastructure, climate change and cybersecurity.