Rampant mislabeling of seafood and black-market fishing not only misleads consumers, but it also adds to a major loss to the global fishing industry every year. In order to stop the illegal activity, Obama administration unveiled new measures in Boston on Sunday.

At an annual meeting of the seafood industry at the Boston Convention Center, the plan was shared included in a 40-page report. The plan aims to track the fish and crustaceans from the place where they were caught to where they are sent.

The plan drafted by a presidential task force will be launched immediately. There are 15 measures in the plan to control illegal fishing and fraud. One of the measures is to urge foreign government to stop pirates from stealing fish from other countries' waters. Other measure includes a new system in which seafood will be traced before it enters US ports.

As per the plan, all seafood shipped to the United States will require some additional information, including who were the fishermen who caught it, and when, with what. Federal, state and local authorities will generate the tracking data and it will be maintained in a central database.

Bruce Andrews, deputy secretary of the US Commerce Department, announced the new measures at the Seafood Expo North America, said, "Our nation's fisheries remain threatened by illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and seafood fraud, which negatively affects our markets".

Andrews affirmed that the task force's new plan will implement the recommendations that ensure that the US fishing fleets remains competitive in the global economy. The action of plan has come over three years after a Boston Globe investigation that unveiled how restaurants and stores in Massachusetts had routinely mislabeled fish and sold cheap, lower-quality seafood than they had promised to customers.

After a year, a follow-up investigation found 75% of seafood samples taken from 58 restaurants and markets around the area had been mislabeled.