Question 812 — sea and coastline

Summary

France pays particular attention to the surveillance of its territorial waters in the Pacific. This surveillance is exercised in particular by the armed forces in New Caledonia (FANC) which contribute to the defense of France's sovereignty and the safeguarding of its interests in the geographical areas concerned. To accomplish their missions of protection and surveillance of New Caledonian waters, the FANC has air and sea means. It is specified, in this regard, that the two P 400 patrol boats, to which the honorable parliamentarian refers, will be withdrawn from active service in 2020. Work is currently being carried out with a view to considering the delivery from 2021, instead of 2025, of the first BATSIMAR type patrol boats (maritime surveillance and intervention vessels) called to replace them, thus making it possible to avoid and, at the very least, to significantly reduce temporary capacity outages. Concerning illegal fishing, repeated incursions by Vietnamese-flagged vessels, commonly known as Blue boats, into New Caledonia's territorial waters have led to an appropriate response from state services. Indeed, 3 large-scale fisheries police operations, carried out under the authority of the government delegate for state action at sea, made it possible, in 2016, to divert and control 8 Blue boats. Alongside elements of the maritime gendarmerie, FANC patrol boats and aircraft actively participated in these operations which took place between June 20 and 23. Alongside these local interventions by state services, the French ambassador to Vietnam intervened with the authorities of this country, in order to define common areas of effort to strengthen the fight against illegal fishing activities. Furthermore, more generally, the development of the use of satellites in the field of maritime surveillance makes it possible to better target the use of means of action in the vast areas over which France exercises its sovereignty. In order to harmonize the needs and further rationalize the practices of French administrations contributing to State action at sea in the field of the use of satellites for maritime surveillance, the naval staff commissioned the construction, on mandate of the Secretary General of the Sea to the Prime Minister, of a demonstrator called “Trimaran”. This demonstrator takes the form of a one-stop shop providing access to information from an evolving catalog of commercial satellites. At the end of an experimental phase carried out in various parts of the world, it was decided to perpetuate this system and extend it to all maritime zones. In this context, State services are to date able to effectively deal with intrusion attempts by infringing vessels into the exclusive economic zone of New Caledonia, it being noted that no presence of Blue boats has been detected in these waters for several months.

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