Fishing by dodgy fleets hurts economies, jobs in developing countries: Report

Companies implicated in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing can have a serious impact on the economies, job opportunities and overall welfare of the developing countries in whose waters they operate, according to a recent report from London-based global affairs think tank the Overseas Development Institute.

The report, released Feb. 16, used consolidated fisheries and satellite data to gauge the economic damage done by fishing fleets with shady track records in five vulnerable countries: Ecuador, Ghana, Peru, the Philippines, and Senegal. It found that these companies’ fishing activities could be costing the five countries 0.26% of their combined GDP, leaving 30,174 people jobless and pushing 142,192 individuals deeper into poverty than they otherwise would be.

“In this report, we wanted to make a business case for sustainable fishing to show that it is in developing countries’ economic interests to have robust sustainable fishing policies,” Miren Gutierrez, study author and a professor of communication at the University of Deusto in Spain, told Mongabay. “This is crucial because the health of the oceans and the sustainability of fish stocks are directly linked to the activities of real companies and the people behind them.”

Analyzing economic impacts

The authors chose the focus countries based on their vulnerability to overfishing and IUU fishing, their geographic diversity, the diversity of their fishing sectors, and the “significant presence” of foreign vessels in their waters.

To start with, Gutierrez’s team obtained satellite tracking data on both foreign and domestic vessels operating within the five countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) — the band of ocean stretching 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the shore — from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022. After looking into the vessels’ owners and operators, the team identified 19 companies previously implicated in fishing crimes and other serious violations like bribery or illegally transferring catches between vessels. These companies owned or operated a total of 657 vessels in the five EEZs.

“Understanding the ownership patterns of vessels operating or visiting a country’s EEZ is very relevant to establishing an accountability framework in which high-risk ships and companies could be effectively inspected or targeted by patrolling exercises,” Dyhia Belhabib, environmental scientist and principal fisheries investigator for the NGO Ecotrust Canada, who was not part of the study, told Mongabay.

Then, after consulting in-country stakeholders and investigative journalists to learn about unsustainable fishing practices in the five countries, the authors analyzed the satellite vessel-tracking data via a deep-learning algorithm to identify the fleets’ fishing maneuvers. They spotted, for example, vessels operating close to no-take zones, or foreign-owned vessels competing heavily with domestic ones in the same location.

Next, using fishery, economic and jobs data, the authors were able to calculate the effect of fishing by the questionable companies on the GDP, employment and poverty in each country.

“The report emphasizes that the uncontrolled growth in global fishing has led to overfishing, stressing fish stocks and impacting communities and the oceans’ well-being,” Gutierrez said.

Daniel Ocampo, senior campaign manager for ocean conservation NGO Oceana Philippines, said he believes the report, which was funded by the Ocean Innovation Challenge of the U.N. Development Programme, requires the attention of the five countries. The Philippines, where he works, suffers an estimated 0.02% loss of its GDP, the endangerment of more than 17,000 jobs, and the impoverishment of nearly 24,000 people due to the fishing activities of companies with a track record of wrongdoing, the report calculated.

“The identified job losses translate to a lot of economic losses [for the Philippines], not just in terms of our GDP or the country’s income, but also the people involved who are actually losing the opportunities that they have for our waters,” Ocampo, who was not involved in the report, told Mongabay.

Focus on distant-water fishing

Experts estimate that one of every five fish in the world’s seafood supply comes from IUU fishing. Many researchers have looked into this shadowy and generally unsustainable fishing across the globe, but the report authors observed a particular lack of information about so-called distant-water fishing (DWF) companies with a history of IUU practices and the economic toll they take on developing countries. Such companies operate far outside their home nations’ EEZs, and studies show they exhibit little transparency, present special challenges to monitoring and regulation, and tend to be associated with detrimental fishing practices such as IUU fishing.

DWF fleets often use cutting-edge technology, giving them a competitive edge. In Ecuador, for example, some foreign DWF longliners (fishing vessels that set long main fishing lines with numerous baited hooks attached to them) are better equipped to fish nonstop and reach remote areas than their domestic counterparts. There, fishing activities of companies with a history of misconduct may account for 0.08% of the country’s GDP, jeopardize nearly 5,000 jobs and send more than 14,000 people further below the poverty line, the report found.

One way foreign companies are able to operate in other countries’ waters is by registering their fishing vessels in that country and flying its flag, a practice called “domestication” that carries a “high likelihood of offense occurrence,” at least in West Africa, according to a 2022 paper by Belhabib and a colleague. The ODI report noted that 192 vessels in the domestic fleets of Ghana, Senegal, Ecuador and the Philippines were “connected to Chinese interests.”

“To know that some countries are actually registering their vessels here [in the Philippines] so they can catch our resources and earn from it; that speaks to how serious the issue is,” Ocampo said.

Moreover, around one-fifth of the foreign vessels operating in the five countries’ EEZs were flying flags of convenience, a practice whereby vessels register in foreign countries known for having loose maritime safety, labor or environmental standards. Since the flag state has responsibility for enforcing applicable laws and restrictions, this can enable illegal fishing by DWF fleets.

Gutierrez described “pervasive abuse” by DWF vessels via such practices as shark finning, underreporting catches, and incidentally catching threatened marine species via the irresponsible use of fish-aggregating devices (FADs).

Transparency, legislation and international cooperation

The report authors acknowledged some limitations in their study: There weren’t enough data to establish representative sample sizes for each fleet, making any broad generalizations of fleet behavior potentially unreliable. Pandemic-related mobility restrictions and trade disruptions likely affected how many DWF vessels were operating in the five countries’ waters from 2021 to 2022. And the authors may not have captured all of the companies’ illicit maritime activities in their analysis, so their estimates of economic impacts were “conservative.”

“There is always uncertainty when it comes to analyzing fishing vessel behavior,” said Belhabib, an expert in illegal fishing whose study areas include Ghana and Senegal.

The report presents 15 recommendations to improve fisheries management and strengthen sustainable fishing in the five countries. These include stricter laws against keeping unintentionally caught species and shark finning in Peru, restricting trawling in Senegal and Ghana, putting a stop to saiko (trading unwanted catch for farm produce) in Ghana, and reducing FAD use in Ecuador. For Gutierrez, the top priority should be improving knowledge and transparency to “enable more informed decision-making and better enforcement of fishing regulations.”

The authors also recommend the countries work with their neighbors and international groups to better implement existing fishing laws — a crucial piece of the puzzle, since in developing countries, catching illegal fishers tends to be easier said than done.

As recently as last October, a Ghanaian fisheries observer disappeared from his assigned fishing vessel, with what appeared to be his headless body turning up on a beach weeks later. The vessel, the Marine 707, is Ghana-flagged with South Korean and Ghanaian ownership.

“Whoever did it, got away with it, again,” Belhabib said. “This impunity is very concerning.”

Banner image: A member of the Ghanaian maritime police observes a vessel suspected of fishing illegally prior to boarding it as part of a U.S.-Ghana combined maritime law enforcement operation in 2014. Image courtesy of Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet/Jeff Atherton via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0 Deed).

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Citations:

Agnew, D. J., Pearce, J., Pramod, G., Peatman, T., Watson, R., Beddington, J. R., & Pitcher, T. J. (2009). Estimating the worldwide extent of illegal fishing. PLOS ONE, 4(2), e4570. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004570

Belhabib, D., & Le Billon, P. (2022). Adjacency and vessel domestication as enablers of fish crimes. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9. doi:10.3389/fmars.2022.936174

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