The people of Sector Corpus Christi don’t disclose much about their tactics in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game in the Gulf, but patrols of the maritime boundary often include conspicuous aircraft flights designed primarily to dissuade potential incursions. A close working relationship with Texas Parks and Wildlife helps the Coast Guard keep a close eye on waters within nine miles of shore, but the three patrol boats of Station South Padre Island bear much of the burden beyond those nine miles. Sector Corpus Christi and the 8th Coast Guard District, headquartered in New Orleans, La., offer periodic support, with a national security cutter tasked to the area for an annual 30-day patrol.

Lt. Cmdr. Kristi Bernstein, chief of enforcement for Sector Corpus Christi, said the Coast Guard makes use of a regional coordinating mechanism, commonly known as RECOM, to make the most efficient use of all available assets in the area. “It’s an excellent resource and one which we use to engage our federal, state, and local partners for enhanced coordination,” she said. “We make use of these relationships to conduct coordinated operations, where we take advantage of each others’ authorities and jurisdictions. Texas Parks and Wildlife, for example, has authority in state waters, so we can take advantage of their authorities to prosecute fisheries violations. CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] holds customs authority within 24 miles, and they can assist us in stopping and inspecting vessels. When the violation is fisheries related, we take action.”

Because the Texas-Mexico border is an area of concern generally for CBP, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is examining several options for enhancing the Coast Guard’s ability to achieve maritime domain awareness. DHS is in the process of adapting the CBP’s Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or “drone”) – which is already flown, sometimes by Coast Guard pilots, to conduct Texas border surveillance flights – into a version capable of conducting maritime surveillance. Once optimized with the appropriate radar and imaging systems, this maritime-capable drone, known as the Guardian, will take to the skies over the Gulf. “Most likely, CBP will be using that for counterdrug initiatives,” Sagers said, “but when it is flown over water, we’re going to be surveilling a lot more lanchas, which will definitely help us in terms of the fisheries mission as well.”

By the testimony of lancha crewmen themselves, the use of long lines and gill nets is devastating to fish stocks – but their impact on U.S. resources has yet to be studied. “It’s not a stretch to say there are thousands of pounds of red snapper – a vital commercial resource down here – that are illegally harvested every year,” Sagers said, “and that’s just based on what we find when we interdict these guys. The impacts to the shark populations – I don’t even know how to gauge that. I think there’s an opportunity for further investigation into what the actual impacts locally are to our resources – and maybe that could generate support for increased enforcement action.”

More support is certainly welcome – but the Coast Guard has always made the most of what’s on hand, just as they’re doing in Sector Corpus Christi. “We’re going to leverage every federal, state, and local authority that we can,” said Bernstein, “to interdict those engaged in illicit activity near [or] on the border.”

 

The Big Blue

The global fish market is undergoing a surge in demand for another species – tuna – that is becoming increasingly costly. On Jan. 6, 2013, a single 498-pound Pacific bluefin tuna, caught off the coast of Japan, fetched a hard-to-believe $1.76 million – $3,603 per pound – at a fish auction in Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market.

About 60 percent of the world’s tuna, a highly migratory species, comes from an area in the Pacific Ocean called the “Tuna Belt,” situated in a line 5 degrees north to 5 degrees south of the equator. While the main challenge in the Gulf of Mexico is the sheer volume of incursions across the maritime boundary, the Coast Guard faces a different quandary in the Pacific, where the distance between its remote island commonwealths and territories, from Guam to American Samoa, totals about 3,600 miles – a distance similar to that between Aruba and Greenland. Within this expanse is nearly half of the total U.S. EEZ, a patchwork of nine noncontiguous zones encircling Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands, Wake Island, Howland and Baker Islands, Hawaii, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll, Jarvis Island, and American Samoa.

Ensuring maritime safety, security, and stewardship in these waters is the charge of the Coast Guard’s 14th District: two sector commands in Honolulu and Guam; four smallboat stations at Honolulu, Kauai, Maui, and Apra Harbor; and one air station, Barber’s Point, on the southwestern shore of Oahu. Thinly spread as these assets are, their work is not limited to the U.S. EEZ in the Pacific; as Cmdr. Bob Hendrickson, chief of enforcement for the district, pointed out, the Coast Guard’s regional partnerships involve operations that extend from the Republic of Palau to French Polynesia. “The area of our primary interest is about 20 million square miles,” Hendrickson said. “That’s not our entire area of responsibility, but we focus on those 20 million square miles.”