The Philippines has lost its main electronic tool for policing commercial fishing boats, and the agency that built the system says it will not accept the verdict quietly.
In a decision released on August 3, the Supreme Court En Banc struck down Fisheries Administrative Order No. 266, the 2020 rule that required every Philippine-flagged commercial fishing vessel to carry a vessel monitoring system and file catch reports electronically. The ruling, written by Associate Justice Maria Filomena D. Singh, upheld a Malabon City Regional Trial Court judgment and dismissed the petition brought by the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.
The court found the order failed the rational basis test. It held that the government had not shown enough evidence that continuous tracking actually detected illegal fishing beyond incursions into protected or restricted areas, and noted that most of the data the system generated duplicated what operators already submitted through existing reporting requirements.
The court also read the Fisheries Code narrowly. Under the law, monitoring means the continuous observation of fishing effort - measured through factors such as "number of days or hours of fishing, characteristics of fishery resources, and resource yields." According to the decision, that definition does not stretch to the continuous tracking of where a commercial vessel is or where it is heading. Fishing grounds, the court said, are proprietary business information.
Three fishing companies brought the original challenge: Royale Fishing Corporation, Bonanza Fishing and Market Resources, and RBL Fishing Corporation. They argued 24/7 transmission exposed trade secrets, and that the rule denied them equal protection because only commercial vessels had to comply while municipal and distant-water boats did not. The court agreed on the equal protection point, finding that municipal vessels have a comparable impact on marine resources and that excluding them from mandatory monitoring was discriminatory.
Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said the government will ask the court to reconsider.
"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.
He argued the system's value lies in running on electronic data rather than manual reports filed by the companies themselves, and that it is central to enforcing closed seasons and protecting nursery grounds. The department also said a commercial fishing licence is a privilege, granted subject to state rules.
Conservation groups reacted far more sharply, and their concern is not about the commercial operators at all - it is about the 15-kilometre municipal waters that the Fisheries Code reserves for small-scale fishers.
"Inilibing ng Korte Suprema ang mga maliliit na mangingisda at ang kanilang mga pamilya sa mas malalim na hukay ng gutom at kahirapan," Oceana Vice President Von Hernandez said. (The Supreme Court has buried small-scale fishers and their families in a deeper pit of hunger and poverty.)
Hernandez argued the ruling removes the only practical way to see whether commercial boats are crossing that line.
"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," he 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.)
There is a due process thread running underneath all of this that fisheries agencies elsewhere may want to read closely. The government argued FAO 266 satisfied the Fisheries Code because it rested on scientific studies and stakeholder consultation. The court disagreed, holding that transparency must extend to how the supporting science is chosen - stakeholders must be told which studies are being relied on, allowed to nominate experts, and given a chance to comment. The only study BFAR cited, the court noted, was outdated.
For now the order is void, the trackers are no longer mandatory, and the fight moves to a motion for reconsideration.
