The oceans are a vast expanse of lawlessness. Where international law governs, it is often the case that no law is enforced. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a part of a global fishing fleet where a significant number of fishing boats act with impunity. These ships fish in protected marine areas with destructive methods. They threaten endangered species on vessels that simultaneously carry out human rights and labor abuses.
There is little to no oversight within the global fishing fleet, allowing human rights and environmental abuses to continue to be unchecked. Often attempts to pursue justice at sea are conducted by human rights advocacy groups and environmental vigilantes. These abuses occur in a vacuum of international oversight: hundreds or thousands of miles from shore, on ships flying the flag of one nation, owned in another nation, and crewed by men from additional nations.
Currently, national governments have little will to deploy resources to defend ocean ecosystems and consumers have little appetite to wrestle with the unethical practices in the supply chain of seafood. Nations ought to make ocean ecosystem and human rights protection at sea a priority through advancements in policy, establishing an international framework to enforce the law at sea, and making these issues national security priorities.
Understanding Crime at Sea
The lack of oversight at sea results in it being a violent place, often devoid of law. Fishing ships resupply on the high seas allowing them to spend months or years in international waters, far from the eyes of government oversight and labor laws. The murky legal structure of front companies and independent manning agencies that recruit crews from impoverished nations to work on foreign-flagged ships make any sort of oversight challenges. These crews are often victims of human trafficking, manipulated through debt coercion, manipulative contracts, threats of violence, and sometimes physical that allow for slavery to exist at sea.
The tragic and systemic issues surrounding the crewing of fishing ships and abuses of the environment and human rights at sea are outlined in great detail in Ian Urbina’s book The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier, making it excellent for further reading on this topic. Urbina travels the world’s oceans chronicling the serious issue of IUU fishing and other abuses at sea in great detail.
These problems are worsened by corrupt governments and local officials who profit by not enforcing laws meant to protect human trafficking or even engaging directly in collaborating with traffickers. The systemic issues of poverty, a lack of economic opportunity, and a system of governance that plays into the hands of traffickers lead to a global fishing economy with pervasive human rights and environmental abuses.
The criminal nature of human trafficking and the dispersion of boats engaged in sea slavery across the globe make an accurate count or enforcement challenging. The International Labour Organization (ILO) concludes that due to this secrecy, there are no reliable estimates or studies as to the prevalence of human trafficking in the fishing industry. They continue, “Regardless of the scale, we do know that it is happening in many countries and affecting a significant number of fishers.” They note that human trafficking in the fishing industry is affecting thousands of fishers, and the number of fishermen repatriated to nations in Asia shows a “prolific trend.” In summary, the International Labour Organization concludes, “ fishers – many of them migrant workers – are subjected to extreme forms of human rights abuses, including forced labor and human trafficking.”
The recognition of this issue by powerful international organizations such as the ILO for the past several decades shows that there is knowledge of the existence of the problem and shows the horrifying, tragic, and embarrassing reality in which these abuses continue unchecked. There has been international concern about this issue for decades. However, the elusive nature of illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing, a vacuum of legal authority, and a lack of effort on the part of governments to combat this issue has resulted in the present situation.
The vast expanse of the ocean aid traffickers in maintaining control over the trafficked fishermen. Ships can remain at sea for months or years, offloading their catch to larger factory ships, in a process known as “transshipment.” Fishing ships can also be resupplied and refueled while at sea, hundreds of miles from the reach of land-based law enforcement and humanitarian efforts. An ILO report concluded, that fishermen have “witnessed colleagues being beaten who subsequently suffered permanent injury. In extreme cases, fishers have been murdered.” The depravity and horror of these circumstances are almost beyond imagining, however, subsequent reports and investigations show this is commonplace within the fishing industry. Out of desperation, fishermen flee fishing boats whenever they have the chance.
The stories of the men trafficked in the fishing industry are harrowing. A fisherman who escaped a fishing boat at sea told the Environmental Justice Foundation in an interview, “There were two possible outcomes – we would escape, or we would be killed. But it made no difference. We were working to serve them, and we would not continue. So I jumped into the sea.” The man chose to attempt to swim to shore, despite the risks, to escape the horrors of work on the fishing ship. Violence on the ship can be commonplace, pushing fishermen to make dire decisions in hope of safety. In Outlaw Oceans, Ian Urbina interviewed Pak, a Cambodian deckhand who fled a Thia fishing boat off the coast of Indonesia. Pak told Urbina, “You belong to the captain. He can sell you if he wants.” Pak fled the ship and swam a great distance to one of the remote Kei Islands of Indonesia, even after he watched a fellow deckhand attempt to escape and drown. Pak describes a setting devoid of hope, in which deckhands are traded and treated as commodities between fishing ships.
These escapes often happened under the cover of darkness, during which deckhands such as Pak would attempt to swim to a nearby island. Another story was that of a Cambodian man who had been promised a construction job if he left his native country. He found himself trafficked on a Thai fishing boat. The man describes the captain’s treatment of the crew as that of, “Screaming, hitting, punching, kicking, no food some days, not water if he’s angry.” The man had escaped this environment on the ship, yet before Urbina’s interview with the man concluded two armed men came, and with the use of threats took the man back to the fishing industry. Urbina asked his translator if they could call the police to stop the abduction of the man, to which the translator replied, “Those were the police.” Corrupt local authorities and desperate economic conditions create a cycle in which men struggle to escape abuses at sea. Police and local authorities working with the fishing industry forced escaped fishermen back into slavery.
Systemic Solutions to Abuses at Sea
To confront this issue effectively, a wide range of reforms across governments, corporations, and international organizations. At the core of the issue is the principle that “Accountability requires transparency.” Part of the problem encountered with confronting abuses and crimes at sea is the weakened to non-existent rule of law, both on land and at sea. As previously discussed, the vacuum of international law results in global inaction. On land, the issues of corruption, threats, negligence, and economic insecurity that plague many coastal nations result in ineffective government systems in confronting well-financed and coordinated human trafficking operations that provide labor for the fishing industry. Robust systems of governance, the rule of law, and anti-corruption efforts anywhere in the world help to confront crimes that are happening far out at sea. Spurring governments to reform, separate themselves from business interests, and push governments towards a more just and independent legal system will be beneficial for all legitimately involved in the fishing industry.
The Environmental Justice Foundation lays out in its report, “Out of the Shadows: Improving transparency in global fisheries to stop illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing” aimed at reforms in policy that would directly confront the issue of abuses in the fishing industry. A global registry of ships assigned International Maritime Organisation numbers that can not be transferred or changed at will must be mandated for all fishing vessels. The use of digital monitoring, always on transponders, and physical observers must be required by nations on fishing ships in their national waters because it allows robust monitoring and the protection of ocean ecosystems. A ban on transhipments and the mandating of observers would protect both the fishermen and ocean ecosystems. However, these terms must become globally universal terms for fishing in territorial waters. Flags of convenience, which allow a ship to register itself as a nation without connection to its owners or crew because of its tax advantages and lack of safety regulations, must be made inaccessible to fishing vessels. The majority of these actions and all of the enforcement must be taken by individual nations, or through efforts that involve massive coordination at international forums. If the inertia and resistance to change can be overcome, huge gains could be made in the improvement in confronting abuses at sea.
Directly confronting these issues is coordinated information sharing and law enforcement action. Publishing updated registries and sharing information with other nations is crucial to preventing IUU ships from slipping through the net of the law. Particularly important is the collaboration between nations on the sharing of information regarding ships with known human rights and environmental abuse efforts.
Furthermore, finance laws on land can expose when individuals are profiting from IUU and human rights abuses. Confronting hidden offshore wealth and money tied to the global fishing industry can not only counter crimes at sea but also undermine criminal behavior related to drug and arms trafficking networks. Addressing the lack of transparency in the global financial system will help to address human rights, environmental issues, and corruption in a myriad of industries because of the ties hidden wealth has to destructive business practices.
Businesses that purchase, wholesale, and retail seafood must invest in tracking information that allows them to have a complete understanding of their supply chain and the sourcing of their product. By requiring businesses to comply with monitoring standards and regulations to ensure the ethical harvest of seafood, major corporations can prompt changes in the global fishing industry that are impactful across the globe and far out into international waters; if the market demands ethical and sustainable seafood, it will be provided. Creating financial and fishing transparency will work to protect the vulnerable ocean ecosystem and fishermen from exploitation.
Regardless of how successful nations are in reform of their laws and regulations regarding fishing within their territorial waters, the issue of abuses in international waters will persist. Currently, the United Nations is in regions called the “Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction.” It aims to create an international legally binding instrument structured in a way such that it achieves its objectives through the use of global and national guidelines. It is unknown what the final results of these negotiations will be, but maybe movement in the correct direction. It is necessary to have an international framework to enforce the law on the high seas, so operators cannot continue to act with impunity. A United Nations mandate that gives naval vessels the right to intercept any ship believed engaged in illegal activity provided they can prove a burden of evidence is a potential theoretical option to address the current issues with the IUU fishing fleet. This type of mandate could include the right to intercept nations on an INTERPOL wanted list. What remains is the need for a robust enforcement effort against IUU fishing and other ships perpetrating abuses at sea.
Lackluster enforcement efforts at sea allow for these abuses to continue to flourish. Sea Shepard, the vigilante environmental group was the only organization willing to work to attempt to enforce the law protecting the region’s oceans dedicated as environmental sanctuaries. Sea Shepherd did this, despite lacking clear legal authority to enforce the law on the high seas, especially considering they are not acting on behalf of any government. Yet, they proved effective in tracking and chasing the illegal toothfish fishing ship, Thunder, for thousands of miles, possibly with aid and intelligence from INTERPOL. The result was that the captain sank the ship to avoid gathering evidence that could be used for prosecution. If ocean resources are to be protected, law enforcement at sea, especially that relating to environmental protection, must become a national security priority of navies across the globe.
Another example of the ned for further resource investment into patrol and protection of fisheries is the nation of Palau. The small island nation of Palau struggles to patrol its over 230,000 square miles exclusive economic zone, of which it has the sole right to the natural resources within. Palau has one patrol boat, donated from Australia, that it uses to attempt to stop illegal fishing across the island nation. It is only because of an effort on the part of Australia to equip Palau to defend its ocean territory that Palau can make an attempt and run some enforcement operations. Robust enforcement both in exclusive economic zones and on the high seas requires it to become a national security priority, meaning that combatting lawlessness on the high seas becomes a goal of the world’s navies and alliances. Despite the geopolitical and resource-based obstacles that remain, making environmental protection a military priority would impede abuse at sea.
Conclusion
Lawlessness at sea allows human rights and environmental abuses to flourish unchecked. The global seafood industry has been built upon a system of abuse and trafficking that flourishes in the vacuum of law at sea. The parts of the system that are land-based are often not vulnerable to law enforcement scrutiny because they operate in nations with under-resourced and sometimes corrupt governments.
The prevalence of horrific abuse at sea is a reminder that robust action is needed to directly confront the issue. The mandating of international registration ad the closing of legal loopholes that have allowed fishing ships to operate with impunity is a practical first step. Information sharing and the coordination of enforcement and law enforcement must be developed between agencies in various nations.
Establishing international frameworks for enforcing environmental and human rights law at sea, along with the deployment of resources to enforcement efforts, present viable options to begin to address this issue. Acknowledging the seriousness of the problem of lawlessness at sea and taking direct action to counter it presents the best opportunity to extend the reach of justice to the high seas.