transmit vessel identification, date, time, position, course and speed either hourly or every 2 hours (if the responsible Fisheries Monitoring Centre can request positions). The only exception is for vessels that operate only inside home waters, and are used exclusively for aquaculture. One of the challenges for European MCS is that the idea of a EEZ is meaningless for nations with coasts in small seas such as the Mediterranean or Baltic. In such circumstances, appropriate international agreements need to be developed to govern fishing beyond the territorial limit and thus on the high seas, but high seas that would have overlapping jurisdiction in an EEZ-based model. There are precedents where maritime pollution already is handled on a basin basis, which might provide a framework for fisheries enforcement in international waters of a small sea: Mediterranean (Barcelona Convention) Baltic (Helsinki Convention) North Sea (Bonn Agreement) A recent IMO regulation requires AIS transponders aboard vessels, which transmit identifier, name and position of vessels not limited to fishing. Another approach might involve either AIS, or the more finely grained VTS, agreements that use coastal radar to monitor ships in and beyond coastal waters. This allows a transport vessel, for example, to be tracked in the small sea. Another cross-check could involve current EU RADARSAT ScanSAR imagery, correlated with transponder information, such that only radar images of ships without active transponders display to enforcement personnel. At present, however, inspectors on aircraft or surface patrol vessels may not have real-time access to satellite imagery. Currently, the fusion of VMS, radar (satellite, aircraft, or coastal) has to be done at an operations center ashore. Another complication is that enforcement organizations for such things as spill monitoring are not concerned with issues such as illegal fishing. In order to coordinate the policy making and enforcement efforts the EFCA - European Fisheries Control Agency in Vigo, Spain has been established. The operational cooperation between Member States is organized with Joint Deployment Plans (JDPs). In order to support the JDPs, EFCA is operating a Vessel Monitoring system that in its first two years of operation (2009–2011) has exchanged 8 million VMS messages from 4520 vessels of 49 Flag States. The VMS software used by EFCA is . Northwest Atlantic The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization is composed of Canada, Cuba, Denmark (in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland), European Union, France (in respect of St Pierre et Miquelon), Iceland,