https://news.yahoo.com/illegal-fishing-fleets-generate-10-billion-in-annual-sales-151546221.html
Yahoo News
Illegal fishing fleets generate $10 billion in annual sales
Ian Urbina, The Outlaw Ocean Project
Contributor
Mon, October 3, 2022 at 8:15 AM
A small silhouette of a bird is seen flying in front of three ships on
the ocean against a blue sky with clouds.
The Thunder. (Simon Arger/Selase Kove-Seyram/Sea Shepherd)
If you look at the taxonomy of crime that plays out offshore, it’s both
diverse and acute. And yet illegal fishing sits at the top of that
hierarchy. It’s a global business estimated at $10 billion in annual
sales, and one that is thriving, as improved technology has enabled
fishing vessels to plunder the oceans with greater efficiency.
The Thunder flourished in this context. Interpol had issued a Purple
Notice on the ship, the equivalent of adding it to a most wanted list, a
designation given to only four other ships in the world up to that time.
The vessel had collected over $76 million from the illicit sales of
seafood in the past decade, more than any other ship, according to
Interpol estimates.
Listen and subscribe to "The Outlaw Ocean" podcast.
Banned since 2006 from fishing in the Antarctic, the Thunder had been
spotted there repeatedly in the years that followed. In 2015, that’s
where the environmental organization Sea Shepherd found it. Speaking
through a translator, Peter Hammarstedt, captain of the Bob Barker,
warned that the Thunder was banned from fishing in those waters and
would be stopped.
It was the beginning of an extraordinary chase and the subject of the
second episode of “The Outlaw Ocean” podcast, from CBC Podcasts and the
L.A. Times. Listen to it here:
For 110 days and more than 10,000 nautical miles spanning two seas and
three oceans, the Bob Barker and a companion ship, both operated by Sea
Shepherd, trailed behind the trawler, with the three captains close
enough to watch one another’s cigarette breaks and on-deck workout
routines. In an epic game of cat-and-mouse, the ships maneuvered through
an obstacle course of giant ice floes, endured a cyclone-like storm,
faced clashes between opposing crews and nearly collided in what became
the longest pursuit of an illegal fishing vessel in history.
As chronicled by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism
organization whose reporter was on board the Bob Barker, the chase ended
with a distress call from the Thunder. “We’re sinking,” the Thunder’s
captain pleaded over the radio. The ships operated by Sea Shepherd
rescued the crew and tried gathering evidence of its crimes before the
ship sank to the bottom of the ocean.
The hull of a ship, upended as the vessel appears to sink into the ocean.
The Thunder sinking in 2005. (Simon Arger/Selase Kove-Seyram/Sea Shepherd)
Taken to the nearest port officials in São Tomé and Príncipe, the
Thunder’s senior crew members were arrested. Three officers were charged
with a variety of counts, including pollution, negligence and forgery.
But losing the ship — and the evidence that went down with it, including
the fish in the hold, onboard computers, various records and fishing
equipment — makes prosecution more difficult, Interpol and Sea Shepherd
officials acknowledged.
The second episode of “The Outlaw Ocean” podcast also focuses on another
notorious case related to illegal fishing that happened on the seas off
the coast of North Korea, where battered wooden “ghost boats” drifted
through the Sea of Japan for months, their only cargo the corpses of
starved North Korean fishermen whose bodies had been reduced to skeletons.
A dimly lit small boat with ragged equipment drifts in choppy waters.
A ghost boat in Korean waters in 2019. (Fábio Nascimento)
For years the grisly phenomenon mystified Japanese police, whose best
guess was that climate change pushed the squid population farther from
North Korea, driving the country’s desperate fishermen to dangerous
distances from shore, where they became stranded and died from exposure.
But an investigation conducted by the Outlaw Ocean Project, based on
satellite data, revealed what marine researchers now say is a more
likely explanation: that China was sending a previously invisible armada
of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, violently
displacing smaller North Korean boats and spearheading a decline in
once-abundant squid stocks of more than 70%.
Large fishing boats near mountains.
Illegal Chinese fishing boats in Korean waters in 2019. (Fábio Nascimento)
The Chinese vessels — nearly 800 in 2019 — were there in violation of
U.N. sanctions that forbid foreign fishing in North Korean waters. The
sanctions, imposed in 2017 in response to the country’s nuclear tests,
were intended to punish North Korea by not allowing it to sell fishing
rights in its waters in exchange for valuable foreign currency.
The episode surfaces what experts have called the largest known case of
illegal fishing perpetrated by a single industrial fleet operating in
another nation’s water.
(Ian Urbina is the director of the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit
journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on
environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.)