As the world continues to search for an effective way to deal with illegal fishing, Australia and Indonesia have been held up as a success story.
South-east Asia has the highest number of fishing vessels in the world and for a time Indonesian ships fishing illegally in Australia's northern waters were a source of great diplomatic strain and environmental concern. 
Vice-president of ocean policy at the World Wildlife Fund, Michele Kuruc, said the co-operation shown between Australia and Indonesia to tackle illegal fishing in the region should be an example of how to resolve a problem often considered too difficult to solve.
"You don't have to look much further than those two countries to see what co-operation really did," she said. "An intensive effort to raise awareness was made at every level and it worked."
Indonesian vessels fishing illegally in Australian waters were intercepted and arrests made but Ms Kuruc said while enforcement played a part, tackling the problem "government to government, minister to minister" was crucial to ensure long-term change.
The co-operation shown by the two countries was also important because it set a standard for the region. While illegal fishing is undeniably a global problem, often it was more efficient to tackle it at a local level, she said.
Globally it is estimated that up to $US23 billion ($31 billion) is lost each year due to illegal fishing. However, Ms Kuruc said given much of the illegal activity was associated with criminal syndicates, this was likely a conservative figure.
"A lot of this operates under the radar," she said.
But things are changing. Not only is Interpol showing an increasing interest in illegal fishing activities, particularly around west Africa, advances in technology are also playing a part. Cheaper, more user-friendly devices had the potential to be game changers in the monitoring and prosecution of illegal fishing activity worldwide - and not just by authorities.
Just last month DigitalGlobe photographed two fishing trawlers loading illegally caught fish onto the massive refrigerated cargo ship Silver Sea 2 off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Though blurry, the satellite image published in a report by the Associated Press news agency resulted in the ship being seized by the Indonesian navy.
"Enforcement alone will not solve this problem," Ms Kuruc said. "These kinds of boats move quickly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and technology has helped make great advances proving there are increasing ways to monitor and get images like this to track hip movements."
In America where about one in five pieces of seafood eaten is illegally caught, authorities are working to boost consumer confidence that the local and  imported seafood has been harvested legally and sustainably.
"This is a huge undertaking for a country our size," said David Balton???, deputy assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries in the US bureau of oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs.
Among the early measures is to identify the fish and shellfish species considered most at risk of being illegally harvested.
Fairfax Media travelled to Washington DC as a guest of the Department of State Foreign Press Centre.