Monitoring the world’s fishing fleets for labor abuse and illegal fishing is a difficult task, but new data could help firms and countries intervene more effectively.
The country a vessel is registered to, often known as its “flag state,” and the type of fishing gear the vessel carries onboard are two significant risk factors, according to a Stanford University-led report published in Nature Communications. The findings provide policymakers and regulators with a list of vessel features and regions to consider when procuring seafood.
“Surveillance on the high seas is innately challenging, so these data provide a critical first step in helping stakeholders understand where to look deeper,” said lead author Elizabeth Selig, deputy director of the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions.
“We hope these findings can help to inform strategically expanded enforcement, focus development aid investments and increase traceability, ultimately lowering the chance that seafood associated with labor abuse or illegal fishing makes its way to market.”
The researchers also discovered that labor abuse and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing are widespread around the world, based on an online survey of experts: Nearly half of the more than 750 ports studied around the world are linked to the risk of one or both behaviors.
However, in addition to demonstrating the global scope of these dangers, the study also identifies potential mitigation strategies at the port level, such as detecting and responding to labor abuse and discouraging the landing of illegally captured fish.
“Major seafood companies are now able to understand where risks are greatest in order to help them meet their commitments to remove labor abuse and illegal fishing from their supply chains,” said co-author Henrik Österblom, science director at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, who heads the science team advising SeaBOS, an initiative that includes the world’s ten largest seafood companies. “These results can help them confront these challenges.”
Ports are one of the few places to identify and respond to labor abuse. We need to ensure that policies and practices allow fishers to access trusted actors and services at port so they can safely report on their condition.
Jessica Sparks
Remote risk prediction
Due to limited surveillance and enforcement capacity, IUU fishing has long thrived on the high seas or in waters beyond a country’s authority. Millions of tons of fish are caught illegally every year. Workers on board IUU fishing vessels are frequently subjected to forced labor, debt bondage, and poor working conditions.
Due to the difficulty of identifying which vessels are involved in illegal activities at any given time and the need to manage risks more broadly across fleets, the study team chose to assess risk, or the possibility that illegal activities may be occurring in a specific area, rather than predict case numbers.
The authors combined human insights with large data to investigate risk. An anonymous survey of experts from seafood corporations, academic institutions, human rights organizations, and governments was used to determine the degree of certainty surrounding whether specific ports were linked to labor abuse or IUU fishing.
The researchers then used machine learning to combine survey responses with Global Fishing Watch’s satellite-based vessel-tracking data to identify higher-risk zones linked with transshipment, where crew and catches are moved between vessels, and at sea.
Coastal zones off West Africa, Peru, and the Azores showed increased risks of labor exploitation and IUU fishing for fishing vessels. Vessels registered to countries with inadequate corruption control, vessels controlled by countries other than the flag state, and vessels registered to China all have a higher probability of engaging in unlawful activities, according to the model.
The data was dominated by Chinese-flagged vessels, which make up the world’s largest fishing fleet, and were consequently studied independently. Certain fishing gear types, such as drifting longliners, set longliners, squid jiggers, and trawlers, were found to be more vulnerable to transshipment.
The survey also revealed a significant presence of foreign-flagged vessels in fishing grounds thousands of miles from where their catch is delivered to port. This implies that ports with lax surveillance standards can encourage illegal activity from afar, emphasizing the importance of regional cooperation.
The promise of ports
Every voyage starts and ends in a port. These crowded stopovers are important sites where officials may monitor and enforce labor and catch laws. The researchers looked at how successful port procedures are at reducing the hazards of these illicit actions.
They looked at how long ships spent in port for labor abuse and discovered that riskier ships spend less time in port, reducing the chances of port officials intervening or employees using port services.
“Ports are one of the few places to identify and respond to labor abuse,” said Jessica Sparks, a fellow at the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions and associate director at the University of Nottingham Rights Lab. “We need to ensure that policies and practices allow fishers to access trusted actors and services at port so they can safely report on their condition.”
The team looked at how vessel visits changed when the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) went into effect in 2016, which sets inspection requirements, data exchange, and port entry refusal when appropriate for foreign-flagged vessels. The team discovered that in the year after the PSMA’s implementation, fewer dangerous vessels visited countries that had approved PSMA regulations compared to nations that had not.
“Port state measures offer a lot of promise, but they need to be implemented effectively and, ideally comprehensively across regions, so that vessels cannot easily escape scrutiny by going to a port in a neighboring country,” said Selig. “We need regional ratification and effective implementation.”
The Packard Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation all contributed to the study.
