Vessel Tracking

Decreto 430 | General Law on Fisheries and Aquaculture

Does the law/regulation require or exempt fishing vessels to keep VMS turned on, or is there no provision?

  • Article 64B

    Translated text:

    Owners of industrial fishing vessels; for artisanal vessels with a total length equal to or greater than 15 meters and transport vessels, as well as artisanal vessels with a total length equal to or greater than twelve meters and less than fifteen meters registered in pelagic fisheries with the purse seine gear registered in Chile, that carry out extractive fishing activities in national jurisdictional waters, must install and keep in operation an automatic positioning device at sea. In the case of benthic resource fisheries, the provisions of letter d) of Article 48 A shall apply. The same obligation must be fulfilled by the owners of vessels registered in Chile that operate in non-jurisdictional waters; the owners of vessels that, whether or not registered in Chile, conduct research fishing inside or outside jurisdictional waters; and the owners of factory vessels that operate in jurisdictional waters or on the high seas. Likewise, this obligation will be applicable to the owners of fishing vessels or factory vessels of foreign registry that are authorized to call at the ports of the Republic. The system must guarantee, at a minimum, the automatic transmission of the vessel's updated geographical position. The positioning device must always remain operational on board the vessel, from departure to arrival at an authorized port. The manner, requirements, and conditions of application of the requirement established in this article will be determined in the regulations, after consultation with the National Fisheries Council. Likewise, an automatic geographic positioner must be installed in cases where the competent judge sanctions a major fishing vessel as a repeat offender for acting illegally in an area reserved for artisanal fishermen or falls into the infractions indicated in Title IX of this law. The installation and maintenance of the automatic positioning and transmission device, as well as the transmission of the signal to the satellite and from it to the first receiving station, will be at the expense of the owner. Transmission from said station to the inspection stations will be at the expense of the State.