By The Joint Analytical Cell (JAC)

In early October, the Joint Analytical Cell (JAC) released the results of a collaborative analysis into a fleet of Chinese-linked distant-water squid fishing vessels. These vessels are known as the “150 Series,” named as such because each vessel’s reported Maritime Mobile Service Identities (MMSI) numbers all start with the numbers one-five-zero. This group of vessels identified in the report appear to have engaged in behavior consistent with attempts to conceal their identity by MMSI spoofing — changing and sharing names over Automatic Identification System (AIS), as well as using multiple MMSIs, making it extremely challenging to monitor and enforce their activities. Following the identification of this behavior, which has been linked with illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities, the JAC engaged with China to better understand the nature and motivation of the behavior identified.

Long Beach CaliforniaL Global Fishing Watch, 2023. 46p.

By The Wildlife Justice Commission

The report builds on our first crime convergence report, published in 2021, which analysed a set of 12 case studies, and illustrated the varied ways that wildlife crime can overlap or intersect with other serious and organised crimes.

It presents additional analysis and insights from three in-depth case studies, based on open-source research and intelligence collected during Wildlife Justice Commission investigations. These three case studies add to the knowledge base on this issue, which will continue to develop globally as more cases are detected and analysed.

Wildlife crime is a cross-cutting criminal activity which cannot be tackled in isolation from other crimes. Crime convergence should be further studied and integrated as part of the approach to tackle wildlife crime and organised crime more broadly. An improved understanding of this intersection can help to identify more strategic policy and law enforcement responses to address it.

The Hague: Wildlife Justice Commission, 2023.39p.

By Lauren Young, Cathy Haenlein and Grace Evans

Comprising everything from small-scale, near-shore activity to industrial-scale, long-distance operations, the current IUU fishing threat has the potential to evolve significantly in a warming world. A global horizon scan explores the impacts of climate change on IUU fishing over the next 10 years and beyond.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a multifaceted global threat, occurring worldwide in inland waters, exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and on the high seas. Comprising everything from small-scale, near-shore activity to industrial-scale, long-distance operations, the current IUU fishing threat has the potential to evolve significantly in a warming world.

These evolutions stand to occur as fish populations themselves respond to a warming climate. Alongside critical stressors such as overfishing, oceanic warming is set to continue to contribute to an ongoing overall decline in fish populations globally. In parallel, there is evidence that key species are shifting poleward and to deeper waters, with declines in marine catch potential expected in the tropics. Combined with the effects of melting sea ice, changing weather patterns and the growth of marine heatwaves, among other factors, the impact on aquatic ecosystems is potentially highly destabilising.

These disruptive environmental changes have a range of potential implications for IUU fishing activity. The need to anticipate future trends across the threat landscape is thus pressing.

This paper presents the results of a global horizon scan conducted to explore the impacts of climate change on IUU fishing over the next 10 years and beyond.

The scan gathered globally available information by eliciting submissions from contributors worldwide, with a group of expert assessors collating and prioritising trends based on their ‘novelty’, ‘plausibility’ and ‘potential impact’. The scan produced a ranked list of 20 priority trends, categorised into four thematic areas. While the scan considered both emerging threats and opportunities, most of the 20 priority trends speak to emerging challenges, with potential options to address them where feasible and appropriate.

The first group of trends emerging from the scan covers evolving IUU fishing issues linked to shifting fish stocks and distributions. A number of these have the potential to challenge existing management and enforcement frameworks. Potential trends identified relate to an emerging ‘race to fish’ in the Arctic; ice loss and rising demand in the Antarctic; climate change impacts on the Humboldt Current System; novel interactions between mobile industrial fleets and smaller vessels; and domestic fishery closures potentially altering the length of supply chains.

The second group of trends relates to contested maritime boundaries and ungoverned spaces. Potential emerging trends include risks arising where fish cross between EEZs, and where sea-level rise feeds into maritime boundary disputes; evolving intersections between IUU fishing and geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea; the rising importance of IUU fishing in maritime security discourse; and the push to expand marine protected area (MPA) cover despite unresolved issues around the policing of MPA borders.

The third group of trends relates to evolving socioeconomic and criminological dynamics across small-scale IUU fishing and larger-scale operations. Potential issues include the incentivisation of IUU activity as livelihoods are undermined; risk-taking and vulnerability in the face of extreme weather; reliance on illegal labour practices in the face of reduced profitability; and evolving criminal tactics and patterns of crime convergence with growing seafood scarcity.

The fourth group of trends relates to challenges and opportunities for monitoring and enforcement. Potential emerging issues relate to vessel monitoring capabilities to detect climate-driven changes in IUU activity; gaps around the evaluation of interventions; persistent weaknesses in the transnational response; port infrastructural upgrades; and mounting public pressure for transparency.

To support efforts to address these trends, this paper offers a set of broad considerations for the range of stakeholders involved in the global response to IUU fishing. With future policy unable to address climate impacts in isolation, these are designed to be considered in the wider context of other evolving aspects of fisheries management.

Advance planning is essential. Many identified potential impacts of climate change are rooted in already visible trends, with advance action needed given the time required to update multilateral agreements, for example. Dedicated monitoring is needed to track changes in fish stocks relative to specific governance arrangements, as are forward-looking fisheries crime assessments.

Vessel-monitoring capabilities must be bolstered to detect climate-driven changes in activity. IUU fishing vessels could exhibit greater spatial mobility as they pursue shifting fish stocks, yet numerous gaps persist in vessel identification and monitoring capabilities. Gaps in state-level capacity to analyse unprocessed data continue to act as a barrier, with sustained work to build analytical capacity required.

Enforcement must be strengthened and adapted to a climate-changed future. With perpetrators of large-scale IUU fishing potentially becoming increasingly geographically mobile, gaps in international cooperation must be addressed. Systematic evaluation of existing enforcement, mitigation and deterrence methods is also needed to inform future interventions. Beyond this, challenges around the policing of expanding MPAs must be addressed.

Enhanced transparency and traceability must be pursued. As fish distributions shift and potentially alter the length of supply chains, responses continue to be hindered by a lack of transparency. Fishing-specific transparency legislation should be passed, ultimate beneficial ownership registries expanded, and schemes such as the Fisheries Transparency Initiative supported.

Geopolitical stakes woven into fishing activity must be accounted for. As stocks of key species decline and their distributions shift, new juxtapositions of marine biomass concentration and fishing effort across jurisdictional boundaries risk altering the geopolitical stakes involved. A clear focus on fisheries is needed as part of wider efforts to build mutual trust and cooperation in affected areas.

Resilience among artisanal fishing communities must be strengthened. In a range of locations, climate change could affect the vulnerabilities facing fishing-dependent communities as key species shift out of reach to deeper, cooler waters. Evidence-based measures must be enacted to enhance resilience to climate change, including long-term ‘pro-poor’ strategies to strengthen adaptive capacities.

High-volume IUU fishing must be treated with the severity it deserves. With IUU fishing often treated as a minor issue, the disconnect between crime type and response could grow, as shifting fishing grounds potentially increase IUU actors’ reliance on sophisticated organised criminal operations. National legislation must be updated such that large-scale IUU fishing qualifies as a serious crime per the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, with enforcement responses tailored to address shifting crime convergence.

London: RUSI, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, RUSI Occasional Paper, March 2023. 67p.

By Annika Mozer and Stefan Prost

Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) is among the most lucrative illegal industries in the world. Its consequences go far beyond direct effects on the species in trade. In this review, we outline the basics of IWT and discuss its cascading consequences on environments, human lives and communities, national stability, and the economy. In addition, we outline structures used in IWT, from subsistence and local use to more complicated configurations, which can include multiple players. Furthermore, while a small fraction of poaching is opportunistic, most of the international IWT is run by organised crime groups. We outline how IWT can be associated with many different crimes like drug trafficking, corruption, or whitewashing. Additionally, many studies have observed a rapidly increasing trend of online trade with endangered and protected species. Moreover, this review gives a short overview of the situation in the European Union (EU) regarding laws and implementation of CITES and highlights that the EU acts as a major source, transit hub, and consumer in IWT. To address the highly dynamic and complicated problem of IWT, research, knowledge exchange, funding, and collaborations in all fields are necessary.

Forensic Science International: Animals and Environments. Volume 3, December 2023

By Marianne Allison Lee, Ramacandra Wong

Giant clams (Bivalvia: Cardiidae: Tridacninae) are the largest bivalves in the world. They are distributed in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans and play a vital role in the ecosystem. Giant clams contribute to coral reef health, abundance, and diversity by increasing seabed heterogeneity, acting as a substrate for reef-associated organisms, providing an additional food source, and filtering water to sequester nutrients, among others (Othman et al., 2010; Neo et al., 2015). Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), giant clams are classified under family Tridacnidae, but a recent phylogenetic analysis placed the twelve extant giant clam species under family Cardiidae and sub-family Tridacninae (Tan, 2021). Ten of these giant clam species have been listed on CITES Appendix II since 1985. This listing was in response to the increased harvesting of giant clams for their meat, shells, and the aquarium trade that led to some species like Southern Giant Clam Tridacna derasa, Giant Clam T. gigas, and Scaly Clam T. squamosa becoming locally extinct in their range countries (Lucas, 1994; Wells, 1997; Huelsken et al., 2013). In 2010, Othman et al. reported that populations of all seven species of giant clams in Southeast Asia were in severe decline, while some species were functionally extinct. This has moved some countries, such as the Philippines and Indonesia, to implement giant clam restocking programmes.

TRAFFIC, Southeast Asia Regional Office, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia., 2023. 16p.

By Fernandes M., Chopra M., Gautam A., and Badola, S. T

In Deep Waters: India's sea cucumbers in illegal wildlife trade – found at least 101.40 tonnes and 6,976 sea cucumber individuals in illicit wildlife trade in India for 2010-2021. It was released ahead of World Fisheries Day on 21 November 2022, a day dedicated to highlighting the critical importance of healthy ocean ecosystems and the need to ensure sustainable fisheries stocks. The report looked into the reasons behind the unsustainable sea cucumber trade and found that demand for sea cucumbers in East Asian and Southeast Asian markets, along with the ease of harvest and low processing costs (drying), are proving detrimental to the species and their survival in India. According to the seizure reports, Sri Lanka, China, and Southeast Asia were the top three destinations for sea cucumbers trafficked from India. The new report also provides action points to help curb the illegal sea cucumber trade in India, including a detailed recommendation on future research priorities, enhancing capacity for interdiction by law enforcement agencies, devising policies and promoting community engagement and awareness.

New Delhi: TRAFFIC India 2022. 36p.

By Cardell D. Johnson

The National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection collaborate to combat imports of seafood caught via illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The agencies share information in several ways, including through Border Protection's interagency coordination center. But, NMFS officials reported concerns about getting timely information from Border Protection. For example, an NMFS official told us it may take as long as a week for the agency to get information on a shipment that it might want to inspect—which may be too late. We recommended that Border Protection ensure that NMFS has timely access to such information.

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2023. 29p.

By Alin Kadfak, Kate Barclay, and Andrew M. Song

Focusing on the experiences of Thailand and Australia, this book examines the impact of trade-restrictive measures as related to the EU’s regulations to prevent Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. It is widely accepted that IUU fishing is harmful, and should be stopped, but there are different approaches to tackling it. Acknowledging this, this book argues that major efforts to fight IUU fishing require careful analyses if the goal is to achieve optimal results and avoid unintended consequences. The book draws on the recent experiences of Thailand and Australia to offer an empirical examination of one increasingly prominent solution, trade-restrictive measures. With Thailand representing direct, active intervention by the EU and Australia a more indirect dispersion of policy narratives and discourses, the book provides a rounded view on how likely it is that different countries in different situations will adapt to the changing policy norms regarding IUU fishing. Understanding the reactions of countries who might be targeted, or otherwise be influenced by the policy, generates new knowledge that helps inform a more effective and scalable implementation of the policy on the part of the EU and a better governance preparedness on the part of non-EU fishing nations. In broader terms, this book exposes a key moment of change in the compatibility between environmental regulations and international trade. The EU IUU policy is a prime example of a policy that uses the mechanisms of international trade to account for environmental and conservation objectives. …

Abingdon, Oxon, UK ; New York: Routledge, 2023. 95p.

  By The Task Force

  The United States government is committed to combating human trafficking at home and around the world. The particular problem of forced labor on fishing vessels on the high seas – a form of human trafficking – has emerged as an especially vexing challenge to policymakers, enforcement officials, and worker advocates. This is a particular challenge due in part to the physical isolation of those workplaces and the complex legal and jurisdictional issues on the high seas. While this report focuses on legal and jurisdictional issues, it is important to bear in mind the situation of workers victimized by human trafficking. Understanding the human suffering of victims is paramount in designing an effective – and a morally sound – policy solution. Fishing workers, often from impoverished backgrounds, have left their families and support systems behind in order to work long hours in difficult and dangerous conditions in hopes of earning enough money to create a better life. When a worker instead confronts physical or psychological abuse and punishing debt, and loses hope of finding the better life they were looking for, the lasting psychological, physical and financial harm can be incalculable. Due to ongoing concern in both the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government, Congress in March of 2018 directed the Department of Justice to convene an interagency task force to examine legal and jurisdictional issues related to human trafficking on fishing vessels in international waters and to make recommendations for executive and legislative action to address this scourge.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2021. 51p.

By Gohar Petrossian

Humans are deeply dependent on fishing―globally, fish comprise 15 percent of the protein intake for approximately 3 billion people, and 8 percent of the global population depends on the fishing industry as their livelihood. The global fishing industry is plagued by illegal fishing, however, and many highly commercial species, such as cod, tuna, orange roughy, and swordfish, are extremely vulnerable.

Through criminological analysis, The Last Fish Swimming emphasizes the importance of looking at specific environmental factors that make illegal fishing possible. It examines such factors as proximity to known ports where illegally caught fish can be landed without inspection (i.e., ports of convenience), fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance efforts, formal surveillance, and resource attractiveness in 53 countries that altogether represent 96 percent of the world's fish catch. The book calls upon the global community to address the illegal depletion of the world's fish stock and other similar threats to the world's food supply and natural environment in order to ensure the sustainability of the planet's fish and continuation of the legal fishing industry for generations to come.

Santa Barbara. Praeger. 2019. 191p.

By Stephen Kastoryano, Ben Vollaard

We uncover a hidden illegal fishing practice: the use of fishing nets with illegally small mesh size. The small mesh prevents nearly all fish of saleable size from escaping the net, but also traps a large number of fish which are too small to be sold on the market and are therefore discarded at sea. Our approach relies on readily available data on reported fish landings rather than on data from inspections, which are rare, and which tend to be anticipated by fishermen. We focus on bottom trawling, the world's most widely used fishing method. We exploit the fact that using illegally small mesh size strongly increases the share of small fish in the catch. Using quasi-random variation in nautical patrol as a source of variation in the incentive to comply, we show that in weeks without patrol the share of small fish in the landed catch is systematically larger than in adjacent weeks with patrol. Our results are in line with widespread use of illegally small mesh.

Bonn: The IZA Institute of Labor Economics, 2022. 53p.

By The American University Center for Latin American & Latino Studies and InSight Crime

This report details the causes, consequences, and responses to IUU fishing crimes in nine countries of Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guyana, Jamaica, Panama, Suriname, and Uruguay. Our analysis draws on academic research; press reports; interviews with fishers, experts and government officials conducted in 2021 and 2022; and comments by participants in off-the-record workshops hosted virtually at American University. The report first details the adverse consequences of IUU fishing in Latin America and the Caribbean, including its direct and indirect economic costs, environmental consequences, contributions to food insecurity and potential conflict. The second section analyzes the scope of crimes associated with IUU fishing in the nine countries, describing three distinct dynamics of IUU fishing at work in the hemisphere. The third section analyzes the legislative sources of the weak government response to IUU fishing in the nine countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, discussing the gaps in existing legislation, patchwork international agreements, and a web of bilateral agreements with a variety of international actors. The fourth section evaluates the considerable variation in three significant measures of regional law enforcement capacity: physical capacity, surveillance capabilities, and prosecutorial-judicial capacity. Finally, the report concludes by recommending areas in which policies against IUU fishing could be strengthened to deter fishing-related crime across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Washington, DC: American University Center for Latin American & Latino Studies and InSight Crime, 2022. 77p.

By Liwalam Madikiza

In this paper, a review and assessment of the status of the fishery was done by looking at the abalone policy objectives for the Long Term Fishing Rights Allocation Process and examine the status of those specific policy objectives. In addition, a general assessment of the fishery focusing on important topical issues was conducted. Since the implementation of MLRA, a reasonable progress has been made towards legalizing and management of abalone fishing industry, but the major threat of escalating reports of illegal fishing or poaching has a detrimental effect to the resource. Most of the abalone (legal and illegal) is exported to the Far East. Political changes in South Africa i.e. the end of apartheid regime added both urgency and expectations of broadened access and might have prompted those that were disappointed by the outcome of the process of rights allocation to join illegal fishing. There are currently 303 authorized commercial abalone right holders as opposed to 5 right holders prior to the transformation process, with a further number of people directly depending on this fishery to meet the basic requirements for living.

United Nations University, Fisheries Training Program, Iceland. 2015. 44p.

By Mark Burnett, Natalia Dronova, Maren Esmark, Steve Nelson, Asle Rønning, and Vassily Spiridonov

The high northern latitudes support rich biological diversity, including expansive fish stocks, large colonies of seabirds, benthic communities, and a wide variety of marine mammals. Arctic biodiversity and biological productivity is of great international economic importance. About 70 per cent of the world’s total white fish supply comes from arctic waters. This marine resource is also extremely significant to arctic regional and coastal communities. Illegal fishing for Atlantic cod and Alaska pollock in the Arctic threatens the health of these globally important fisheries and their resilience to climate change. It undermines all efforts to build sustainable fisheries management regimes – a pressing objective in the Arctic, where temperatures are rising at twice the global average. Extensive data for the Barents Sea contrasts with the limited information available about estimated illegal fishing in the Russian Far East. As well as providing alarming illustrations of how widespread IUU fishing can become when adequate measures are not taken, the Arctic also gives encouraging examples of how IUU fishing can be greatly reduced. In the Barents Sea region, Norway and Russia have cooperated on fisheries management for several decades. Experience working together has resulted in concrete measures to control, regulate and monitor fishing. These measures have borne fruit recently with the reduction in illegal fishing in the Barents Sea. This achievement shows how coordinated efforts among governments, industry and non-governmental organisations can make a real difference in stopping criminal fishing activities. The current challenge is to keep up the momentum, learn from positive experiences, and leverage our commitment and knowledge to expand the fight against illegal fishing.

Oslo, Norway: World Wildlife Fund, International Arctic Programme, 2008. 52p

By North Atlantic Fisheries Intelligence Group and INTERPOL

Secrecy, or the ability to keep one's identity hidden behind a corporate veil, is a key facilitator of fisheries crime, including tax crime and other ancillary crimes in the fisheries sector. Secrecy means that investigators “don’t know what they don’t know” and is a fundamental challenge to fisheries crime law enforcement. The focus of this report is the jurisdictions that facilitate secrecy in fisheries, the flags of convenience, and particularly those that are contracted out to private companies, the so-called private flags, and the impact flags of convenience and secrecy has on effective fisheries crime law enforcement.

NA-FIG, INTERPOL, the Nordic Council of Ministers and Norad 2017. 76p.

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By Sjarief Widjaja, Tony Long and Hassan Wirajuda

By looking at the breadth of areas in need of reform, this Blue Paper lays out a methodology for addressing IUU fishing, including best practices for implementing the Port State Measures Agreement and other means to prevent IUU fishing catches from entering the market. It also discusses ways to promote technologies for combating IUU fishing, strategies for transitioning IUU fishing fleets, and the role of regional and international partnerships.

Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 2020. 60p.

By Kimon de Greef amd Simone Haysom

Abalone, a variety of marine snail, is valued as a high-status delicacy in East Asia, primarily in China. For more than 30 years, a species of abalone found only in South African waters – Haliotis midae, known locally as perlemoen – has been subjected to massive levels of poaching, driving the evolution of a lucrative and violent criminal economy. This report maps out the profound harms associated with this trade, ranging from resource collapse to corruption, turf wars and the erosion of state institutions. Despite decades of anti-poaching efforts, illegal harvesting is currently at its highest-ever levels, with record prices for abalone, myriad groups competing for profits — from Cape gangsters to Somali smugglers — and few realistic prospects for bringing the trade under control. Faced with these facts, a radical shift to the current state response is needed. Although reports exist of poaching in other countries such as Australia and the US, South Africa has been the global hotspot for abalone poaching since the 1990s. Abalone is harvested by divers, dried in South Africa and smuggled over the border to other southern African states, where it is laundered into licit trade routes and is shipped, primarily, to Hong Kong (the hub of the global abalone trade), from where it enters East Asian consumer markets.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 62p.

By World Bank

This paper has two goals - to motivate policy makers in developed and emerging economies to pay more attention to illegal logging, fishing, and wildlife trade, and to provide a road map to address the root causes of the illegal activities. Illegal wildlife trade directly causes declines in species population, resulting in the deterioration of ecosystem functions. Illegal activities involve trade of species threatened with extinction, including many keystone species. It also covers a range of mammals, such as pangolins (considered the world’s most trafficked mammal), and wood products such as rosewood, and marine mammals such as the vaquita found in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. For all practical purposes, combating illegal logging, fishing, and wildlife trade is a governance issue that first and foremost requires high-level political commitment at the national and international levels. The financial action task force (FATF) recommendations (FATF 2012-19) provide a framework for a risk-based, peer-reviewed system of mutual evaluations for compliance with global standards on money laundering and terrorist financing. The national risk assessment tools can be expanded to also address illegal logging, fishing, and wildlife trade and other natural resources crimes.

Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019. 70p.

By Cathy Haenlein.

This paper argues that large-scale illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing takes place on an organised, systematic scale across multiple jurisdictions, and must therefore be recognised as transnational organised crime. Such IUU fishing endangers food security, threatens livelihoods, undermines the rule of law and deprives states of revenues. It also intersects with other crimes, further amplifying the threat to security. Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is conventionally treated by governments worldwide as the result of technical regulatory infringements. As such, it is often deemed a matter for industry regulators and dismissed as a trivial issue insofar as it relates to national security. This diagnosis is flawed. Certainly, IUU fishing is often small in scale and conducted by artisanal fishers out of ignorance of laws, or opportunism. Yet there is also evidence that much of today’s IUU fishing activity takes place on an organised, systematic scale across multiple jurisdictions. Testament to this are the volumes involved. Although numerous difficulties affect such calculations, global losses to IUU fishing have been estimated at some $10–23.5 billion annually – equivalent to 11–26 million tonnes of fish per year. The result is the plunder of the world’s oceans, threatening not only marine ecosystems, but also the security of human populations. Large-scale IUU fishing endangers food security, threatens livelihoods, undermines the rule of law and deprives states of revenues. It also intersects with other crimes, further amplifying the threat to security. Yet research on these security dimensions is limited and fragmented; our understanding of their dynamics remains partial. Policy and practical responses, meanwhile, remain ill-suited, failing to keep pace with the complexity of the threat posed.

London: Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), 2019. 56p.