Ship: Seahorse
Name: Laura Sánchez
Date: 27/02/23
Ship’s Activity: Monitoring
Table 1. Panga counting done during the night of the 26th of February from 20:00 to 00:00 with radar observations. There were no pangas seen either inside or outside of the ZTA.
Total | Pangas ZTA | Pangas ZTA Buffer Zone | Pangas Outside ZTA |
0 | 0 | 0 |
Table 2. Panga counting done during the 27th of February from 00:00 to 19:00 with radar observations. The hours not represented in this table correspond to hours when no pangas were seen in the ZTA or outside.
Hour | Pangas Inside ZTA | ||||
Total |
Net Fishing | Divers | Potential Net Fishing | Crossing | |
06:00 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
07:00 | 29 | 0 | 24 | 0 | 5 |
08:00 | 35 | 0 | 24 | 8 | 3 |
09:00 | 40 | 0 | 24 | 16 | 0 |
10:00 | 45 | 0 | 24 | 21 | 0 |
11:00 | 45 | 0 | 30 | 15 | 0 |
12:00 | 44 | 0 | 40 | 0 | 4 |
13:00 | 34 | 0 | 32 | 1 | 1 |
14:00 | 26 | 0 | 26 | 0 | 0 |
15:00 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
16:00 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
17:00 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
18:00 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Hour | Pangas ZTA Buffer Zone | |||
Total |
Net Fishing | Divers | Potential Net Fishing | |
07:00 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 2 |
08:00 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
09:00 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
11:00 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
13:00 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
15:00 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
16:00 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Hour |
Pangas Outside ZTA | |||
Total |
Net Fishing | Divers | Potential Net Fishing | |
05:00 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
09:00 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
12:00 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
15:00 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
16:00 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 22 |
17:00 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Note: the panga in the ZTA buffer zone fishing is the same one that was crossing back and forth between the ZTA and the buffer zone. The divers in the buffer zone were crossing, same as some of the ones in the afternoon.
Total number of different pangas fishing today in the ZTA: 0.
Total number of different pangas fishing today in the ZTA Buffer Zone: 1.
There was movement in the ZTA from early morning. We spotted the first divers at 6:00, and their numbers increased to probably more than 40 during the day. The increase in potential net fishing pangas is because our focus on those hours did not allow us to see closely the panga clusters that were increasing in number in the center of the ZTA; we approached those later and all we could see were diver pangas and a couple of pangas with nets on board that were crossing.
At 8:00 we were monitoring two pangas with nets on board that were in the ZTA buffer zone but close to the border. They moved around for almost an hour, going in and out of the ZTA, and close to 9:00 one of them started to retrieve a shrimp net in the buffer zone that did not have any markers on the surface. They finished retrieving it at 9:35 and afterwards they kept on crossing back and forth inside and outside the ZTA.
At 12:00 a Navy vessel defender entered the ZTA and was patrolling the area until after 13:00. We also saw many pangas outside of the ZTA in the NW corner in the afternoon.

Figure 1. Panga activity in the ZTA today 27th of February.

Figure 2. Radar screenshot at 9:00, with the panga fishing in the ZTA buffer zone (target 32) and around 40 pangas in different clusters in the ZTA.