by Nicole Inaba
From toxic pesticides to animal cruelty, efforts to increase transparency within the agricultural industry have led to a budding movement to transform food systems and grocery markets. Despite a global appetite for seafood, few know about the process behind how seafood makes it to their plate.
Fishing is a major industry with an annual value of over $171 billion. The process behind the harvest of seafood is an incredibly intensive one: according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the number of overfished stocks globally has tripled in half a century, and today one-third of the world’s assessed fisheries are currently pushed beyond their biological limits.
Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing
According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 90% of fisheries are overexploited or fully exploited. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a major contributor to overexploitation: IUU fishing is roughly estimated to be an industry worth $36 billion, providing 20 to 50% of the seafood in global markets.
Illegal fishing occurs when fishing activity goes against laws of the seas or fisheries management measures. Sometimes fishing activity is not accurately reported or reported at all, while unregulated fishing occurs in the high seas or outside of the jurisdiction of regional fisheries management.
“Some [vessels] are even turning off their tracking,” said Blake Ratcliffe, a research associate at the Stimson Center, explaining how some fishers avoid regulations. “You have situations where satellites have tracked ships that are going dark, but they still have other signatures like electronic radiation or just lights. [Satellites] can detect when there are fishing boats in the region with their tracking off, which is illegal.”
Currently, there is no international framework that requires automatic identification systems to be on at all times on fishing vessels or to have this data publicly available. This makes it difficult to address issues of misreporting or underreporting, which contributes to a lack of standardization and organization regarding global fisheries landing and catch data.
Geopolitical and Economic Relations
Industrial distant water fleets (DWFs) are fishing vessels that fish outside of their country’s territorial waters, often hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. Foreign industrial fishing is prevalent within the fishing industry, contributing to a power imbalance between DWF nations and coastal nations.
One study found that 97% of fishing efforts in the high seas, or international waters, were attributed to countries with relatively higher income. The five countries that comprise the majority, or 86%, of the fishing effort are China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Spain, respectively.
Additionally, in the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of lower-income countries, or the territorial waters spanning 200 nautical miles from the shore, 78% of industrial fishing efforts were conducted by vessels flagged to higher-income countries.
“China uses its fleet to further its economic and security goals around the world, tightening economic relationships,” said Ratcliffe. “Their DWF is usually part and parcel with furthering their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the marine element of the BRI. Particularly along the African coast, investment goes into building ports or processing facilities for its fleets.”
Since some developing countries do not have the industrial capacity to utilize their EEZs, they enter into agreements with developed countries and foreign companies in the hope of maximizing their financial gains.
For many coastal nation governments, the fisheries agreements provide a major source of revenue. However, the revenue is not always reinvested into the local communities to improve the health and management of the fisheries, often leaving many communities deprived of fish and income.
Fishing fleets of developed nations are heavily subsidized, allowing them to fish when it would not be economically profitable otherwise. As fishing technologies improve for higher and middle-income nations that allow for lower prices, fishers in lower-income nations face increasing difficulty accessing resources and markets. This further exacerbates economic and resource disparity between countries.
In other instances, local fishers that are able to participate in the global market sell high-value fish to developed countries, driving up prices and depriving local communities of that particular fish.
The health implications of the trade is significant, considering that some 3.3 billion people rely on aquatic animals as their primary source of protein. The welfare of many coastal nations and communities are intricately tied to the wellbeing of their fisheries. However, the current fishing industry is undermining many communities’ food security, economy, and livelihoods.
For instance, in several African nations, the phenomenon of “ocean grabbing” has led to internal strife within several communities. Local people find themselves in conflict with foreign industrial vessels, particularly along the coast where DWFs are common.
“If you see fish stocks crash in 20, 30 years, I mean, where are we going to be?” said Ratcliffe. “It’s going to be very scary besides the water situation, other resources, overcrowding, and the coastal flooding.”
Shifting the fishing industry’s practices to become more socially responsible and sustainable will take a global effort. For example, the United States is responsible for a significant portion of the seafood demand that is driving these fisheries to depletion. In 2018, the U.S., European Union, and Japan, representing roughly 13% of the world’s population, accounted for a whopping 57% of total seafood imports by value. This percentage used to be higher in past decades, but it is quickly declining as demand surges in Asia.
Moving Forward
While transparency and accountability within the fishing industry is an ongoing issue, there are many approaches and efforts that can be taken by a multitude of actors to increase transparency and accountability within the fishing industry.
As a major seafood importing country, the United States has implemented the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) which requires importers to provide key supply chain data of thirteen fish and fish products to reduce market access for illegal fish products. While SIMP is promising, more steps can be taken for major seafood importing countries to standardize and tighten their import requirements, as well as track their supply chain.
As for distant water fleet nations, actions such as mandating vessel tracking systems, increasing transparency of vessel and catch data, and expanding public access agreements can further clear the obscurities that exist within the fishing industry. These nations also have a shared responsibility with coastal nations to ensure that revenue from fishing agreements are invested back into fisheries management and the coastal communities.
So far, 97 countries have signed the Port State Measure Agreement, the first binding international agreement on IUU fishing, but some key countries have yet to sign and ratify the agreement. Without a sweeping, concerted effort from all levels of governance and stakeholders, our oceans and the most vulnerable communities cannot regenerate and flourish.
Nicole Inaba (she/her) is a fourth-year studying Society & Environment and Environmental Economics & Policy. She love talking (sometimes ranting) about environmental degradation, environmental justice, and climate change, and joining Perennial was the perfect opportunity to channel her passion into something more productive than ranting! In a “normal” fall semester, she would be on the football field as a clarinet player of the Cal Band. Outside of class and extracurriculars, she loves to cook, exercise, sing, play the ukulele, and sing while playing the ukulele!