one of the greatest goals in my life as
a fish nerd was to learn and take what I
learned from university and try and save
the world’s oceans I’m pretty optimistic
but my first job in Gabon had nothing to
do with being a fish nerd
how’s the skipper on board a patrol
vessel and confronting illegal fisheries
every single day and absolute there’s
more condition these poor fishermen
living on his business I started to
question what the science I was doing
and believing in really meant and I
started grappling with the idea of like
trying to conceptualize what these guys
were going through and I started
thinking more and more about illegal
fishing and how it impacts everything
and my whole life I’ve been taught what
defines a fish when maybe I should be
understanding what a fish represents
hopes dreams cutters livelihoods and the
very reason these guys are living in
horrific conditions on these fishing
vessels and then I started to think to
myself if I got out to measure another
little fishy has that really got to make
a contribution to saving the world’s
oceans from some of today’s challenges
and I don’t think so
so as a fish nerd what was that doing in
Tanzania on the shores of East Africa
chasing bum fisherman’s criminal
syndicates doing undercover operations
and to find out more and to understand
that we have to understand what blast
fishing really is so fishermen construct
their own explosives they use urea which
is ammonium nitrate and they mix it with
fuel diesel oil and they put it in a
plastic container like you see then this
is a pretty harmless mixture as is so to
make it explode you need a high
accelerant explosive and the fisherman
had access to explodes lv6 explosives
now this is a mining explosive so what
the fishermen would do is they would
grab a fuse place it inside a detonator
and place the detonator inside the
bottleneck of the explosive the
they’ll strap a rock to it and throw it
overboard and wait it’ll sink down to
the reef a few seconds huge explosion
and that explosion absolutely destroys
the natural coral reef in every single
way it does so it actually lays waste to
the coral reef which is the lifeline to
the coastal communities of Tanzania it
literally creates a rubber field with no
natural recourse of recovery and
certainly not in my lifestyle
the fishermen then jump overboard nests
swim down or they get some scuba gear
mesh they jump in the water and they go
and collect their dead fish the problem
is a lot of the fishermen injure
themselves because they don’t know how
to handle the dodgy detonators that
they’re using they blow their arms off
they blow themselves up and even when
scuba diving they don’t understand the
relationship between pressure and depth
so the guy on the bottom side of the
screen is actually got decompression
sickness and I’m not sure if he’s alive
today I really don’t know and that is
the problem these guys are killing
themselves using these explosives and
there’s not just one bomb the hydrophone
data from WWF showed 438 explosives in
46 days that’s to seagoing days in
Darussalam area alone and then the
Wildlife Conservation Society of the
Tanzania program they took a ship and
dragged a hydrophone along the length of
the coastline to record whale songs how
beautiful and what do they get hundreds
of explosions off along the entire
coastline of Tanzania then we have
climate change illegal fishing pollution
these are all having detrimental effects
to the coral reef as we know it and
there will be a point some time and I
think we’ve almost reaching it where the
coral reef is not going to support the
growing poor and resource dependent
population of Tanzania and that’s a
pretty scary thought so Jesse cutter an
international investigation expert an
ex-policeman from South Africa and
myself a fish net were asked by the
Indian Ocean Commission from the smart
fish program to go and investigate blast
fishing in Tanzania and try and reduce
it or
and that was a mandate it is not easy to
catch a bomb fishermen so we were to the
Ministry of Fisheries and we set up some
strategic surveillance operations and
Tangra in the north of Tanzania and our
results were were less than convincing
we spend more time stuck in a tree on a
random island been harassed by mosquitos
predawn not a single fisherman rocking
up then we decided to do Reds on
fisherman’s houses at night two o’clock
in the morning we went to the village
elders they pointed out where these bomb
fishing houses were and winter road and
arrest the guys nothing they had gone
even their furniture had gone they know
we were coming they knew that we then
went to the fish markets and we did we
did a lot of operations in the fish
markets and we were thrown with rocks
and stones and abuse and threatened and
this is a really difficult environment
to try and combat blast fishing so he
changed our strategy let’s go and
capture all the illegal fishing gear and
destroy it including the boats we had
undercover officers in the villages
marking the boats that are indicated as
blast fishing boats so we were just go
and clean them up and then we’ll burn
and destroy their legal fishing gear and
that was one of the the challenges were
facing but after two years we had
literally no success so said they were a
cold beer with JD and I said listen what
are we not getting what are we missing
something’s wrong here because quite
frankly we look like a bunch of Muppets
not achieving about two months later we
had our break we set up an operation in
mataró but first we set up an operation
in daraa so long and we leaked the
information about what we were about to
do fake news it works right we told the
fishermen exactly what they wanted to
hear so the patrol went out Nathalie we
then snuck into a car and drove 700
kilometers south to muara right and then
we got into a little patrol boat
pre-dawn through the mangroves through
the coral channel and went to the deep
sea and waited for the blast fishermen
to come there’s a
thirty-six hour day but we are managed
to rest three blast fisherman’s with
nine kgs of explosives on their boat
from the information we obtain from them
we managed a two o’clock that Sunday
morning to go and pick the explosives
trader the dealer out of the village and
arrest him as well so for the first time
we had first-hand information and
evidence of what was going on up until
this point all our operations were based
on two key assumptions the first is the
bombs were made locally used locally and
traded locally amongst fishermen and the
second was the sale of the fish from
brass fishing incentivized blast fishing
to continue so does the profit margin
what we understood from the information
from these gentlemen that we arrested
was that real completely wrong so the
first assumption the fishermen make the
bombs is partly correct but the urea
explosive you saw earlier is just to add
more bang to your bomb and what really
is interesting is that it’s the trade in
explodes lv6 that is driven by organized
crime and mafia type syndicates we had
completely overlooked the criminal
aspect of what was happening in this
trade and by doing so we were not
climbing up that ladder to be able to
stop blast fishing the second assumption
about the selling of the fish being
profitable was completely false as well
it’s actually the trade the value of the
trade and explosives along the chain
that has the value what we realized when
I had a beer with JD and I really like
what would be missing what what do we
not understand is that we weren’t
looking at the bucket of fish the
fishermen were bringing in from fishing
it’s literally worthless a fisherman
throwing a bomb is a measure of
desperation and he’s been manipulated by
the low-level syndicate leaders the boat
owners the local businessman and the
local politicians at that level so we
had to revise our operations
quadratically
we had touched a nerve in daraa salon
and we wanted to hand some of this
information over to international media
to try and create some publicity about
it
little did JD and I know that we were
about to be arrested so a bit of fortune
and we’ll have foresight from the
Ministry of Fisheries instead of getting
arrested we had a meeting with Inspector
General of Police of Tanzania and we
showed him our case look what we found
look what we’ve uncovered you’ve got a
criminal network dealing in explosives
in your country he immediately said to
us carry on but used this team of
officers that I’ll give you led by mr.
Duma Mahara and go back and help and
work on the investigation to preview new
assumptions and these new assumptions
was very simple the trade and Xplode lv6
has to come from a black market and we
assumed that black market originates in
Mara Rani mining district which is a
tanzanite mines in Tanzania the second
assumption is super dealers are being
used to trade the explosives up and down
the coastline
now when you poke in the dark into
something illegal and lucrative
eventually something pokes back and what
we found is that we were getting a lot
of threats we had to watch our back on
most of our operations
there were times where we were very
worried about our safety and that was
just sort of part of the norm of what we
were experiencing and for me coming from
a world of scientists and are working in
a world of fish crime there’s quite a
lot to to process and get through you
know intimidation fear not only for me
but my family as well
my wife would fire hey what are you
doing in 10 0 at the moment working with
Nemo and some measurings of fish not
nothing to do with bombs and mines and
explosives I promise everything’s fine
and we had to work through that together
as a team because it was intimidating
and we had to carry on because we needed
to find the super diva so we headed to
the mines the tanzanite mines that’s our
team going down and some sort of bucket
like thing into the depths of the mine
you know so we started doing random line
inspections so that the miners wouldn’t
gets worried that there’s an additional
police force in the mining area and what
we found after about four or five days
of the hottest windiest dustiest lesson
in Africa was inside one mine a little
piece of paper handwritten receipt for
the selling over the sale of explosives
from a non-registered dealer uh-huh
maybe this was the source of the black
market and that’s something we had to
investigate so we’ve got two undercover
officers and we set up a sting operation
immediately and the guys went in to this
dealer and pretended to be fishermen
from at whare trying to extend their
business opportunities and they managed
to buy 750 sticks of exploded lv6
from this guy one stick can be broken
down to make five kilograms of urea bomb
so theoretically we stopped three and a
half to three point seven tons of
explosives entering the coral reef by
doing this purchase
we also learned from this guy how to
maneuver the explosives on the road down
to daru-salam as to avoid police stops
and roadblocks and how to get it to a
super dealer so we right narrow ronnie
was a vision of the black market all
right and super dealers were around in
Daraa Salaam so we were we were correct
in assumptions for the last three years
we’d be working with the Ministry of
Fisheries at this real low level of
criminal activity level one level two
the local bomb fishermen and the local
dealers if you want to stop on fishing
you can’t work there you’re not gonna
have any success it’s like putting a
bandaid on a ruptured artery it’s just
not gonna work but after a year of
working with a small little unit with
investigative powers and two criminal
activities in Tanzania we started
unraveling level three level four even
level five transnational criminal
syndicates not only linked with
explosives with wildlife crime as well
and based on the success that we had
uncovered and
what we had shown the Minister of Home
Affairs in the government of Tanzania
officially ratified and signed into a
force the National Tosti the matter
multi-agency task team of Tanzania and
we were ready proud and our duty was to
investigate organized wildlife crime of
which fish crime was part of it so here
we are we started a new agency in the
police force with the Tanzanian
government and we have a blueprint on
how to move forward and fight organized
wildlife crime the key success to the
formation of the mat political wolf and
in Tanzania we have it so now we needed
to get the intelligence on the super
dealer so we infiltrated the darussalam
very fish market with lots of undercover
agents and all the surrounding villages
as well and while we were doing that we
were running operations in tanker in the
north as well as muara in the south and
doing these operations we managed to
arrest more bomb fishers and more
dealers in the torah and from them we
managed to ascertain that the super deal
in dar Salam had alias j4 okay j4 was
now on our radar when we corroborated
that information with our telogen
officers saying names started coming up
j4 so now we have to find j4 so what we
did is has set up a number of sting
operations and we went to buy more and
more and more explosives bigger
quantities every single time the simple
reason we did this in the area where j4
was working is we were buying legitimacy
without lower end dealers that he
obviously controls and with dangling
this money carrot there’s more and more
money available hoping he would come out
of the woodwork and present himself and
deal straight up with us and it happened
our agents were there with a cameras on
and they’re buying some explosives in
the air comes as gosh it’s j4 we’ve got
him on camera Nath he then said to our
agents listen you deal with me directly
I don’t trust these guys out of me
they’re stealing my money
she said j4 no problem we’ll deal with
you we will do all our dealings with you
% so this was our first opportunity to
catch the super dealer so we set up
another sting operation we wanted to buy
a thousand sticks of exploded lv6
and 50 kilograms of a urea explosives so
we’ve got our undercover agents ready we
put all the money in their bag and then
we go to iPhone and put that I lost my
iPhone function on threw it in his bag
as well because the deal was going to go
down in the townships and the outskirts
of dar Aslam they’re derelict roads and
sort of tattered houses and it’s very
difficult to find a way we certainly
didn’t know we infiltrated the area with
plain clothed police officers and case
as a security risk that went down and we
had a arrest vehicle on standby in close
proximity of where our iPhone was
telling us things were happening and
that’s how we did it that’s the tools
that we had so we’ve got to the area of
the number of location changes obviously
they’re starting to see who’s following
us and they made j4 in a location and a
pretty tight end part and the cargo has
been loaded in her agent car but had
that exact point are a risk vehicle
couldn’t get to them lose j4 what do we
do
and at that moment the agent undercover
agent had a brilliant idea
he’s like oh I’m suddenly suffering from
a severe case of diarrhea you know that
that that plastic excuse mark does the
chicken again well that’s what he did
and Jeff Falls I caught with his a total
over here around the art house and as
the agent got into the toilet he bent
down and phoned our race vehicle who was
close by and because he memorized the
way in a way the pile was got happen he
managed to guide the car in a short
chase ensued as a bit intense
and finally j4 was arrested we’ve got
the super dealer in Daraa Salaam now the
network doesn’t finish there we continue
following up leads on other dealers and
harvest links to international
syndicates and hard links to wildlife
crime but the key part is to be
prosecution driven investigations where
the measure of success should be
convictions and in this case the
Tanzanian government
own that success if we want the
political world to fight wildlife crime
so we continue and for me as a fish nerd
I never ever thought I’d be working with
a multi-agency task team on multiple
levels and scales of fish crime but I
always lint in my life to look beyond my
level of expertise and to share that
knowledge openly and freely and in the
case of blast fishing we had to look
beyond the fact that it’s illegal
fishing beyond the facade and we had to
uncover that criminal element of
criminal network because that is fish
crime and fish crime is wildlife crime
and only way to fight this is through a
multi-agency task team format it works
its international best practice in the
fight against fish crime and wildlife
crime time is our limiting factor not
the potential of our collective
resources thank you
[Applause]
a fish nerd was to learn and take what I
learned from university and try and save
the world’s oceans I’m pretty optimistic
but my first job in Gabon had nothing to
do with being a fish nerd
how’s the skipper on board a patrol
vessel and confronting illegal fisheries
every single day and absolute there’s
more condition these poor fishermen
living on his business I started to
question what the science I was doing
and believing in really meant and I
started grappling with the idea of like
trying to conceptualize what these guys
were going through and I started
thinking more and more about illegal
fishing and how it impacts everything
and my whole life I’ve been taught what
defines a fish when maybe I should be
understanding what a fish represents
hopes dreams cutters livelihoods and the
very reason these guys are living in
horrific conditions on these fishing
vessels and then I started to think to
myself if I got out to measure another
little fishy has that really got to make
a contribution to saving the world’s
oceans from some of today’s challenges
and I don’t think so
so as a fish nerd what was that doing in
Tanzania on the shores of East Africa
chasing bum fisherman’s criminal
syndicates doing undercover operations
and to find out more and to understand
that we have to understand what blast
fishing really is so fishermen construct
their own explosives they use urea which
is ammonium nitrate and they mix it with
fuel diesel oil and they put it in a
plastic container like you see then this
is a pretty harmless mixture as is so to
make it explode you need a high
accelerant explosive and the fisherman
had access to explodes lv6 explosives
now this is a mining explosive so what
the fishermen would do is they would
grab a fuse place it inside a detonator
and place the detonator inside the
bottleneck of the explosive the
they’ll strap a rock to it and throw it
overboard and wait it’ll sink down to
the reef a few seconds huge explosion
and that explosion absolutely destroys
the natural coral reef in every single
way it does so it actually lays waste to
the coral reef which is the lifeline to
the coastal communities of Tanzania it
literally creates a rubber field with no
natural recourse of recovery and
certainly not in my lifestyle
the fishermen then jump overboard nests
swim down or they get some scuba gear
mesh they jump in the water and they go
and collect their dead fish the problem
is a lot of the fishermen injure
themselves because they don’t know how
to handle the dodgy detonators that
they’re using they blow their arms off
they blow themselves up and even when
scuba diving they don’t understand the
relationship between pressure and depth
so the guy on the bottom side of the
screen is actually got decompression
sickness and I’m not sure if he’s alive
today I really don’t know and that is
the problem these guys are killing
themselves using these explosives and
there’s not just one bomb the hydrophone
data from WWF showed 438 explosives in
46 days that’s to seagoing days in
Darussalam area alone and then the
Wildlife Conservation Society of the
Tanzania program they took a ship and
dragged a hydrophone along the length of
the coastline to record whale songs how
beautiful and what do they get hundreds
of explosions off along the entire
coastline of Tanzania then we have
climate change illegal fishing pollution
these are all having detrimental effects
to the coral reef as we know it and
there will be a point some time and I
think we’ve almost reaching it where the
coral reef is not going to support the
growing poor and resource dependent
population of Tanzania and that’s a
pretty scary thought so Jesse cutter an
international investigation expert an
ex-policeman from South Africa and
myself a fish net were asked by the
Indian Ocean Commission from the smart
fish program to go and investigate blast
fishing in Tanzania and try and reduce
it or
and that was a mandate it is not easy to
catch a bomb fishermen so we were to the
Ministry of Fisheries and we set up some
strategic surveillance operations and
Tangra in the north of Tanzania and our
results were were less than convincing
we spend more time stuck in a tree on a
random island been harassed by mosquitos
predawn not a single fisherman rocking
up then we decided to do Reds on
fisherman’s houses at night two o’clock
in the morning we went to the village
elders they pointed out where these bomb
fishing houses were and winter road and
arrest the guys nothing they had gone
even their furniture had gone they know
we were coming they knew that we then
went to the fish markets and we did we
did a lot of operations in the fish
markets and we were thrown with rocks
and stones and abuse and threatened and
this is a really difficult environment
to try and combat blast fishing so he
changed our strategy let’s go and
capture all the illegal fishing gear and
destroy it including the boats we had
undercover officers in the villages
marking the boats that are indicated as
blast fishing boats so we were just go
and clean them up and then we’ll burn
and destroy their legal fishing gear and
that was one of the the challenges were
facing but after two years we had
literally no success so said they were a
cold beer with JD and I said listen what
are we not getting what are we missing
something’s wrong here because quite
frankly we look like a bunch of Muppets
not achieving about two months later we
had our break we set up an operation in
mataró but first we set up an operation
in daraa so long and we leaked the
information about what we were about to
do fake news it works right we told the
fishermen exactly what they wanted to
hear so the patrol went out Nathalie we
then snuck into a car and drove 700
kilometers south to muara right and then
we got into a little patrol boat
pre-dawn through the mangroves through
the coral channel and went to the deep
sea and waited for the blast fishermen
to come there’s a
thirty-six hour day but we are managed
to rest three blast fisherman’s with
nine kgs of explosives on their boat
from the information we obtain from them
we managed a two o’clock that Sunday
morning to go and pick the explosives
trader the dealer out of the village and
arrest him as well so for the first time
we had first-hand information and
evidence of what was going on up until
this point all our operations were based
on two key assumptions the first is the
bombs were made locally used locally and
traded locally amongst fishermen and the
second was the sale of the fish from
brass fishing incentivized blast fishing
to continue so does the profit margin
what we understood from the information
from these gentlemen that we arrested
was that real completely wrong so the
first assumption the fishermen make the
bombs is partly correct but the urea
explosive you saw earlier is just to add
more bang to your bomb and what really
is interesting is that it’s the trade in
explodes lv6 that is driven by organized
crime and mafia type syndicates we had
completely overlooked the criminal
aspect of what was happening in this
trade and by doing so we were not
climbing up that ladder to be able to
stop blast fishing the second assumption
about the selling of the fish being
profitable was completely false as well
it’s actually the trade the value of the
trade and explosives along the chain
that has the value what we realized when
I had a beer with JD and I really like
what would be missing what what do we
not understand is that we weren’t
looking at the bucket of fish the
fishermen were bringing in from fishing
it’s literally worthless a fisherman
throwing a bomb is a measure of
desperation and he’s been manipulated by
the low-level syndicate leaders the boat
owners the local businessman and the
local politicians at that level so we
had to revise our operations
quadratically
we had touched a nerve in daraa salon
and we wanted to hand some of this
information over to international media
to try and create some publicity about
it
little did JD and I know that we were
about to be arrested so a bit of fortune
and we’ll have foresight from the
Ministry of Fisheries instead of getting
arrested we had a meeting with Inspector
General of Police of Tanzania and we
showed him our case look what we found
look what we’ve uncovered you’ve got a
criminal network dealing in explosives
in your country he immediately said to
us carry on but used this team of
officers that I’ll give you led by mr.
Duma Mahara and go back and help and
work on the investigation to preview new
assumptions and these new assumptions
was very simple the trade and Xplode lv6
has to come from a black market and we
assumed that black market originates in
Mara Rani mining district which is a
tanzanite mines in Tanzania the second
assumption is super dealers are being
used to trade the explosives up and down
the coastline
now when you poke in the dark into
something illegal and lucrative
eventually something pokes back and what
we found is that we were getting a lot
of threats we had to watch our back on
most of our operations
there were times where we were very
worried about our safety and that was
just sort of part of the norm of what we
were experiencing and for me coming from
a world of scientists and are working in
a world of fish crime there’s quite a
lot to to process and get through you
know intimidation fear not only for me
but my family as well
my wife would fire hey what are you
doing in 10 0 at the moment working with
Nemo and some measurings of fish not
nothing to do with bombs and mines and
explosives I promise everything’s fine
and we had to work through that together
as a team because it was intimidating
and we had to carry on because we needed
to find the super diva so we headed to
the mines the tanzanite mines that’s our
team going down and some sort of bucket
like thing into the depths of the mine
you know so we started doing random line
inspections so that the miners wouldn’t
gets worried that there’s an additional
police force in the mining area and what
we found after about four or five days
of the hottest windiest dustiest lesson
in Africa was inside one mine a little
piece of paper handwritten receipt for
the selling over the sale of explosives
from a non-registered dealer uh-huh
maybe this was the source of the black
market and that’s something we had to
investigate so we’ve got two undercover
officers and we set up a sting operation
immediately and the guys went in to this
dealer and pretended to be fishermen
from at whare trying to extend their
business opportunities and they managed
to buy 750 sticks of exploded lv6
from this guy one stick can be broken
down to make five kilograms of urea bomb
so theoretically we stopped three and a
half to three point seven tons of
explosives entering the coral reef by
doing this purchase
we also learned from this guy how to
maneuver the explosives on the road down
to daru-salam as to avoid police stops
and roadblocks and how to get it to a
super dealer so we right narrow ronnie
was a vision of the black market all
right and super dealers were around in
Daraa Salaam so we were we were correct
in assumptions for the last three years
we’d be working with the Ministry of
Fisheries at this real low level of
criminal activity level one level two
the local bomb fishermen and the local
dealers if you want to stop on fishing
you can’t work there you’re not gonna
have any success it’s like putting a
bandaid on a ruptured artery it’s just
not gonna work but after a year of
working with a small little unit with
investigative powers and two criminal
activities in Tanzania we started
unraveling level three level four even
level five transnational criminal
syndicates not only linked with
explosives with wildlife crime as well
and based on the success that we had
uncovered and
what we had shown the Minister of Home
Affairs in the government of Tanzania
officially ratified and signed into a
force the National Tosti the matter
multi-agency task team of Tanzania and
we were ready proud and our duty was to
investigate organized wildlife crime of
which fish crime was part of it so here
we are we started a new agency in the
police force with the Tanzanian
government and we have a blueprint on
how to move forward and fight organized
wildlife crime the key success to the
formation of the mat political wolf and
in Tanzania we have it so now we needed
to get the intelligence on the super
dealer so we infiltrated the darussalam
very fish market with lots of undercover
agents and all the surrounding villages
as well and while we were doing that we
were running operations in tanker in the
north as well as muara in the south and
doing these operations we managed to
arrest more bomb fishers and more
dealers in the torah and from them we
managed to ascertain that the super deal
in dar Salam had alias j4 okay j4 was
now on our radar when we corroborated
that information with our telogen
officers saying names started coming up
j4 so now we have to find j4 so what we
did is has set up a number of sting
operations and we went to buy more and
more and more explosives bigger
quantities every single time the simple
reason we did this in the area where j4
was working is we were buying legitimacy
without lower end dealers that he
obviously controls and with dangling
this money carrot there’s more and more
money available hoping he would come out
of the woodwork and present himself and
deal straight up with us and it happened
our agents were there with a cameras on
and they’re buying some explosives in
the air comes as gosh it’s j4 we’ve got
him on camera Nath he then said to our
agents listen you deal with me directly
I don’t trust these guys out of me
they’re stealing my money
she said j4 no problem we’ll deal with
you we will do all our dealings with you
% so this was our first opportunity to
catch the super dealer so we set up
another sting operation we wanted to buy
a thousand sticks of exploded lv6
and 50 kilograms of a urea explosives so
we’ve got our undercover agents ready we
put all the money in their bag and then
we go to iPhone and put that I lost my
iPhone function on threw it in his bag
as well because the deal was going to go
down in the townships and the outskirts
of dar Aslam they’re derelict roads and
sort of tattered houses and it’s very
difficult to find a way we certainly
didn’t know we infiltrated the area with
plain clothed police officers and case
as a security risk that went down and we
had a arrest vehicle on standby in close
proximity of where our iPhone was
telling us things were happening and
that’s how we did it that’s the tools
that we had so we’ve got to the area of
the number of location changes obviously
they’re starting to see who’s following
us and they made j4 in a location and a
pretty tight end part and the cargo has
been loaded in her agent car but had
that exact point are a risk vehicle
couldn’t get to them lose j4 what do we
do
and at that moment the agent undercover
agent had a brilliant idea
he’s like oh I’m suddenly suffering from
a severe case of diarrhea you know that
that that plastic excuse mark does the
chicken again well that’s what he did
and Jeff Falls I caught with his a total
over here around the art house and as
the agent got into the toilet he bent
down and phoned our race vehicle who was
close by and because he memorized the
way in a way the pile was got happen he
managed to guide the car in a short
chase ensued as a bit intense
and finally j4 was arrested we’ve got
the super dealer in Daraa Salaam now the
network doesn’t finish there we continue
following up leads on other dealers and
harvest links to international
syndicates and hard links to wildlife
crime but the key part is to be
prosecution driven investigations where
the measure of success should be
convictions and in this case the
Tanzanian government
own that success if we want the
political world to fight wildlife crime
so we continue and for me as a fish nerd
I never ever thought I’d be working with
a multi-agency task team on multiple
levels and scales of fish crime but I
always lint in my life to look beyond my
level of expertise and to share that
knowledge openly and freely and in the
case of blast fishing we had to look
beyond the fact that it’s illegal
fishing beyond the facade and we had to
uncover that criminal element of
criminal network because that is fish
crime and fish crime is wildlife crime
and only way to fight this is through a
multi-agency task team format it works
its international best practice in the
fight against fish crime and wildlife
crime time is our limiting factor not
the potential of our collective
resources thank you
[Applause]
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