It also has the support of the WWF, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Earth Institute.

They said they would beef up monitoring of suspected rogue trawlers, urge tougher policing of these ships by states which give them a flag and home port, and lobby countries to uphold international accords on fishing.

The countries see themselves as a catalyst for tackling this entrenched problem, said Britain's Ben Bradshaw, minister for local environment, marine and animal welfare, who chaired the group.

Bradshaw said the initiative was born after the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002, amid deep frustration at fishermen who flout the law and cause catastrophic environmental harm.

"The time for words is over. We know what the problem is, there's been lots of conferences about it, lots of meetings, lots of declarations, now what we need is action," Bradshaw said at a press conference.

"We call on the rest of the international community to join us in a wider network to help implement the practical implementations that are made in this report."

The six countries gathered in the so-called High Seas Task Force, will commit 2.5 million dollars over the next two years to set the ball rolling.

Their proposals include:

-- working with the United States to set up a secure website where governments can swap information about suspected fishing pirates: where ships were sighted and what they were doing.

-- providing technical support and training for poor countries that are victims of illegal fishing. Each year, fish worth at least a billion dollars are scooped out of the waters around sub-Saharan waters.

-- establishing a global database about high-seas fishing vessels, drawn from a patchwork of sources such as Lloyds Register, insurance and corporate records, in order to help trace ownership. "Knowing who controls and who benefits from a ship is possibly the most important pillar in dealing with (illicit) fishing," said the report.

-- urging countries to sign and ratify two key UN agreements on regulating high seas fisheries on the high seas, the UN Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA) and Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Compliance Agreement. Only 56 states have ratified the 10-year-old UNFSA, and only 30 have ratified the FAP Compliance Agreement.

The task force's work focussed on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

Illegal fishing is when trawlers operate in violation of national, regional or international laws.

Unreported fishing is when catches go unreported or underreported to the national or regional authority.

Unregulated fishing refers to vessels that operate without a national flag or fly the flag of countries that is not party to the regional organisation which governs that fishery.

The scheme does not seek to close what some consider a glaring loophole -- that countries cannot, under the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea, jail trawlermen for illegal fishing.

But New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said countries could probably strike a heavier blow by passing and invoking laws to seize assets gained from crime.

"You've got to put these people out of business, to make sure that no-one makes any money out of this and they lose a heap so that the incentive to do it is withdrawn," he said.

"I'd be more persuaded by that kind of approach than I would be by imprisoning some kinds of people are more the pawns in the game than the people who were the instigators."

Meanwhile, the environment group Greenpeace on Friday called for a UN moratorium on bottom trawling on the high seas, a technique in which nets are dragged along the sea bed to scoop up deepwater species but also wrecks delicate habitats.

It said that as few as 250-300 full-time fishing vessels were to blame for this practice. As the number is so small, a moratorium would inflict negligible costs but bring significant environmental benefits, it said.

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