I recently watched a public service television show in Alaska on monitoring of illegal high seas driftnets. Apparently this is a very highly sophisticated system that relys heavily on aerial observation, radar, GPS and is coordinated between Alaska, Canada and if I remember correctly Japan and Russia. The show concluded that there are a few pirates trying to use high seas drift nets, there are not many left.

The proboem is as the worlld population swels, and the value of ever scarcer fish skyrockets, criminals will be tempted to try to sneak in.

This will only get worse, until we wipe out the valuable fish and then tagret less desirable species. I am very pessimistic about the long term health of our oceans.