The Australian Border Force (ABF) is hoping a mobile app feature giving people the ability to report suspicious activity at sea will help combat illegal fishing in the country's far north.

The ABF has partnered with Recfishwest, Western Australia's peak recreational fishing body, to install a reporting function on its fishing app at a cost of $100,000 annually, across a three-year partnership.

It is the agency's latest bid to detect and combat illegal fishing of the state's — and Australia's — far northern coast, where prosecutions have skyrocketed over the last 12 months.

In the past financial year, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority prosecuted 273 Indonesian nationals for fisheries offences, three times more than the previous year and six times the total for 2022-23.

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