Manila's highest court has invalidated the regulation that put satellite trackers on the country's commercial fishing fleet - a decision the government intends to challenge and conservationists say leaves the sea unwatched.
The Supreme Court En Banc, in a ruling released August 3 and penned by Associate Justice Maria Filomena D. Singh, declared Fisheries Administrative Order No. 266 unconstitutional. Issued in 2020, the order extended vessel monitoring and electronic catch reporting from a narrow set of boats chasing migratory stocks to every Philippine-flagged commercial fishing vessel. The court affirmed an earlier Malabon City Regional Trial Court decision and threw out the petition filed by the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.
Applying the rational basis test, the justices concluded the state had not demonstrated a reasonable link between constant tracking and the prevention of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Outside of catching boats inside protected or restricted zones, the court said, there was no sufficient evidence the tracking system detected violations - and much of the information it produced already existed in reports operators were separately required to file.
Equally important was how the court defined the word monitoring. The Fisheries Code frames it as continuous observation of fishing effort through factors such as "number of days or hours of fishing, characteristics of fishery resources, and resource yields." Continuous knowledge of a vessel's position and destination, the justices held, is something else entirely. Where a boat fishes, they said, is proprietary commercial information.
The case was launched by Royale Fishing Corporation, Bonanza Fishing and Market Resources, and RBL Fishing Corporation, who said round-the-clock transmission handed over trade secrets and singled them out unfairly while municipal and distant-water fleets faced no equivalent requirement. That equal protection argument landed: the court found municipal vessels also carry significant impact on marine resources, making their exclusion from mandatory monitoring discriminatory.
The Agriculture Department is not letting it stand. Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. framed the technology as the single best weapon the country has.
"We are confident that the Supreme Court will allow us to use this internationally recognized vessel monitoring system as the most effective way to deal with illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing," Tiu Laurel said.
His argument rests on independence of data - the system reports electronically rather than relying on paperwork submitted by the fishing companies - and on its role during closed seasons and around nursery grounds. A commercial licence, the department added, is a privilege that comes with conditions.
The loudest objection, though, came from the conservation side, and it is framed around small-scale fishers rather than industry. Philippine law reserves waters within 15 kilometres of the coast for municipal fishers, and enforcing that boundary is precisely what the trackers were used for.
"Inilibing ng Korte Suprema ang mga maliliit na mangingisda at ang kanilang mga pamilya sa mas malalim na hukay ng gutom at kahirapan," said Oceana Vice President Von Hernandez. (The Supreme Court has buried small-scale fishers and their families in a deeper pit of hunger and poverty.)
He went further on what the decision costs enforcement agencies day to day.
"Ngayong ipinawalang-bisa ng Korte ang Fisheries Administrative Order (FAO) 266, tinatanggal nila sa karagatan ang pinakamabisang paraan para makita kung iligal bang pumapasok sa loob ng 15-kilometer municipal waters ang mga barkong pangkomersyal. Dahil dito, mabubulag na ang mga ahensyang nagpapatupad ng batas," Hernandez said. (Now that the court has struck down FAO 266, it has removed the most effective way of detecting whether commercial fishing vessels are illegally entering the 15-kilometer municipal waters. As a result, law enforcement agencies will effectively be left blind.)
One finding in the decision deserves attention well beyond the Philippines. The government defended FAO 266 by pointing to scientific studies and stakeholder consultations. The court ruled that meeting the Fisheries Code requires more than holding consultations: stakeholders must know which studies underpin a regulation, be able to nominate their own experts, and be given room to respond. BFAR relied on a single study, and the court described it as outdated.
Until the reconsideration is resolved, the trackers come off - and the boundary around municipal waters is left to be policed the old way.