The leaders of the “Quad”—the United States, Japan, Australia, and India—on Tuesday unveiled a maritime security initiative to better track illegal fishing and “dark shipping” in the Indo-Pacific.
The initiative, dubbed the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), was unveiled during the Quad meeting in Tokyo. It will enable the nations to “fully monitor” and uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific.
“It will allow tracking of ‘dark shipping’ and other tactical-level activities, such as rendezvous at sea, as well as improve partners’ ability to respond to climate and humanitarian events and to protect their fisheries, which are vital to many Indo-Pacific economies,” the White House stated….