Managing Fishing Vessels: Uncovering the Hidden Ownership of Industrial Fleets

1:00:00 You see a seafood label with a country of origin, but you don't really know where that fish came from. Behind every fishing vessel is a story and sometimes a shell company. Oceana uncovered a hidden world where thousands of industrial fishing ships fly one flag, but answer to another. Flags of convenience, foreign ownership, and zero transparency have become business as usual on the high seas. This isn't just paperwork, it's a system that enables illegal fishing and drains wealth from coastal communities. When 62% of vessels lack ownership info, who is responsible for what happens at sea? Some nations like Panama and Belize host fleets, they don't even control, but there's a movement growing to demand transparency, accountability, and fairness in global fisheries. In today's episode, we uncover the truth behind the flag and what needs to change because protecting the ocean starts with knowing who's really behind the wheel. We're going to discuss this and more on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

1:01:01 Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lew, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, I am very delighted to welcome Oceana's Dr. Daniel Scarritt. He's part of their research team for their global fisheries unit. This is going to be one you're going to want to watch. This is going to be one you're going to want to listen to if you watch this on YouTube or listening to this on your favorite podcast app. We're going to be talking about this report that came out in May of 2025 of this year called Beyond the Flag State Paradigm. It's Beyond the Flag State Paradigm, reconstructing the world's large scale fishing fleet through corporate ownership analysis. What we're going to be talking about is all the things that corporations and that the fishing fleet get away with. It's going to be really interesting. Daniel breaks it down for us. He talks about what comes out of this report, talks about the recommendations. You know, we get into it a little bit in terms of the weeds of like what information is missing.

1:02:07 Sometimes just fishing vessel length is missing and the surprising things of what people can get away with when they're at sea. I think this is an interesting episode for people need to listen to. Listen and watch very carefully and really understand how complex fisheries is. It's about how we can detangle the complexity of global ocean fisheries. This is what we're going to be talking about today's episode. I can't wait for you to listen. But before you do, if you want to learn more about how to protect the ocean and be guided to do so, I want you to join the undertow is this new company that I am a co founder of with two incredible people Serena and Amanda. And we are here to guide you through on how to protect the ocean.

1:02:47 Better through the undertow. It's a digital app about the ocean that we're creating and I can't wait for you to join. There's a waiting list right now because we haven't launched the app. We're going to be launching the app soon. I have to do is go to speak up for blue.com forward slash join the undertow that speak up for blue.com forward slash join the undertow. While after you do that, come back and listening to this episode. It's going to be really interesting. Here's the interview with Dr. Dana scare it talking about the new report from Oceana beyond the flag state paradigm. Reconstructing the world's largest scale fishing fleet through corporate ownership analysis. We're going to get into it. It's going to be a lot of fun. Enjoy the interview and I'll talk to you after. Hey, Dan. Welcome to the how to protect the ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about who owns the fishing vessels?

1:03:31 Absolutely. Yeah, it's there. Wonderful. I'm excited because this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. When I first started like when I was like a student, I first started to learn about fisheries just when I was a student. I started to learn about fisheries. Just worldwide. I realize how complex it is and it's not just something like you have a boat. It's registered to such and such country under such and such company's name and it's run by a certain captain and blah, blah, blah. And they go out and they get this type of fish. They come back and it's all locked. That's what I think logically should happen. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out completely that way and it can get quite complex, which makes monitoring fisheries even more difficult and you work for Oceana. Oceana came out with a report back in the day.

1:04:18 It's a long title. We're going to break it all down for you. And then we might go a little beyond not only beyond the flag, but get into the research because Dan, you are a researcher. So before we get into all of the report, everything, let's find out more about you, Dan. Why don't you let us know who you are and what you do. Yeah, cool. I'm Daniel Scarrett. I'm a senior manager of international fisheries Oceana and as you implied, I'm not a campaigner. I'm a researcher and I work in Oceana's global science and strategy team. So we we support campaign and we support campaign. And I think we're going to be able to do that. I'm a research manager of international fisheries Oceana and as you implied, I'm not a campaigner. I'm a researcher and I work in Oceana's global science and strategy team. So we we support campaigners throughout all our Oceana offices and also do kind of some novel research like this report you talked about.

1:05:05 And most of the work I do is on international fisheries, particularly distant water fishing fleets. These are the vessels that fish either in the high seas or away from their home port and in in the waters of other countries. And, you know, by nature, they're quite difficult, as you said, to to manage and our work is, you know, we try to reveal some of the behaviors and the issues that are related to that that kind of fishing fleet. And when you know you're at this point in your career now doing this type of work, how did this all begin? Did you expect when you first started out, you know, learning about marine science and marine biology? Did you expect to be where you are today?

1:05:46 No. My background was in was in fisheries ecology, you know, and as you said about complexity, right? Like, you know, the ecosystem that all these fishing fleets rely on and are extracting an insanely complex. And now a lot of the time, you know, it's more about kind of politics and corporate power as we'll get onto. But no, I didn't I didn't expect this. But I'm happy that I've kind of followed that thread to the place I am now. Yeah.

1:06:29 Well, when you first like when I first started out, you know, I was always like I'm going to it's all about the animals. It's all about, you know, food webs and animal biology and conservation. So I want to protect, you know, fish and corals and seagrasses and mangroves and all these different types of wonderful habitats that, you know, I learned as I grew up and I saw in these documentaries and and I quickly realized probably about after like during my master's degree, I quickly realized that if we want to manage. And of course, I've confirmed this with a number of other researchers and colleagues that if we want to manage, you know, fisheries, if we want to manage the ocean properly, we have to manage the people.

1:07:12 And and Dr. Ed Heinz was on is the one who really kept that. He told me that one time and I was like, that is probably into the mantra of conservation. At what point did you realize first, do you agree with that? And also like in what if you do, at what point did you realize that that was really what we we needed to focus on? Yeah, no, I mean, I do agree with that. I think, you know, having said that, I think without my kind of fisheries background, that fisheries science background, I wouldn't be able to do what I do as well. I don't think I think understanding that kind of the biological aspect of it. Right. That that that impacts the societal, you know, the way these fishing fleets behave, right? They follow currents and they follow the fish.

1:07:58 So I think that there's a fundamental necessity, as you said, to kind of understand the ecology and the biology beneath it. But I think I first realized about, as you say, that fisheries management is probably as much about managing people as it is about fish. When I first started working with fishes and directly going on fishing boats and, you know, kind of realizing, you know, every day they're out there making these kind of decisions exactly where to fish, you know, how to fish and different parts of the fishing fleet and fishing vessels within that are behaving differently, right? Like they don't all have, they're not going out on this kind of nine to five logging in fishing in a particular area coming home. Like, you know, there's this kind of behavioral strategies between the different individuals and kind of realizing that that human aspect of fisheries and the individuality of those people, just as you have in fish, I guess, you know, really kind of triggered that for me of realizing like the people are as important as the fish.

1:08:57 But ultimately, you know, it starts by trying to conserve the fish without the fish. There isn't the jobs. So, you know, you have to conserve the fish to have the jobs that rely on them. Yeah, it's such a dependable relationship, you know, when you really think about having that understanding. Because like when I first got into it, I was all about stock assessments and I'm like, this is where the bulk of the data lies. And it's a very important part of the data. And you have worked over before we press record, you're telling me you've worked in Canada. So, you know, a little bit of the history of stock assessments, you know, and in the role that plays in really understanding the dynamics of how fisheries are doing and assessing how fisheries are doing and how sometimes politicians don't listen to the stock assessment biologists and to and you know, and it and it has, you know, consequences to that.

1:09:49 You know, we're looking at the cod fishery in the early 90s and so forth in the recovery from that. And even to this day, it seems like there, you know, politicians are still not listening to the science. And I would say this works all in between all three of those from the scientists, the government and the fishers. You know, one of my favorite books I would recommend for anyone who's in fishery sciences, Fishing for Truth, right, which is all about the cod collapse on the on the in eastern Canada. That talks about how, you know, scientists as well weren't listening to fishers who weren't listening. You know, there was there was a miscommunication and the end result was this collapse of one of the biggest fisheries ever. I think. Yeah. Yeah. And still is, you know, many parts isn't recovered.

1:10:32 So, you know, I would recommend that book to understand the importance of people in the fisheries and sadly, you know, the not only did the people lose out, but, you know, in this case, the fish stock as well. Absolutely.

1:11:13 So, you know, I think that's a really interesting question. I mean, I think the scientists, the scientists, just the people in general have has improved in terms of communication or do you think it's still similar as it was in the early 90s or even 80s? I don't I don't think it's quite the same. You know, I'd love to be really positive here. But it's not. It's what it's all about. But, you know, sadly, there's many fish stocks, as you know, in Canada, as there are here in the UK and in our waters that are still overfished, right? They're still actively being overfished as well and not just in an overfished state. So I wouldn't say that we've kind of we've made it. But I do think there's a lot more understanding of that need for communication. Like there is a lot more importance put on the need for kind of consultation for for having those voices.

1:11:59 I think the issue might be how do you then you know, those conversations may be happening, maybe not to a sufficient extent. I think the issue is still how do we how do we really implement that into our stock assessments, how we set catches and things like that. I know I know in Canada at the moment, you know, there's a big kind of discussion as well about how to bring an industry and First Nation, you know, these these different ways of thinking about how we should manage fish stocks. And I think a really good start is having those conversations, knowing it needs to be done. You know, I'm I'm sure there are great examples where it's happening and we could see and there are obviously examples where it absolutely isn't happening.

1:12:39 So I think we I think we are progressing. But obviously, you know, that kind of golden, you know, standard of fishery science is still not not is, you know, is still elusive across every fishery that that we look at. Yeah, definitely something that needs to be improved upon. And I think we'll always need to be improved upon. There's there's a lot of stuff going on in the dynamics between almost the different silos of those aspects that we discussed, you know, the science, the politicians and and, you know, fishers, indigenous fishers. You know, there are definitely some conflicts in Canada and worldwide, you know, that we could highlight here for days, you know, it's that's probably an entire separate podcast, not even episode, but just podcast itself on on the the evolution of of that, that type of of conflict as well as hopefully resolution in the future and more resolutions.

1:13:33 There are examples, there are some great examples, there are some awful examples as well. But we're here to talk about the I don't want to get I go on tangents and I apologize, but, you know, it's really interesting when you talk about people managing fisheries is what we really, you know, focus on a lot of the times. And that seems to be your focus. How did that transition like happen in your career where you started to see that light words like, okay, no, we need to start looking at how how fishing vessels and fisheries are are managed in general from the the vessel aspect, like who's fishing where? What are the policies around that? What are the interesting international and national laws around that? How did that transition happen for you?

1:14:17 Yeah, I guess it was quite quite abruptly, actually. So after I finished my my PhD and first postdoc, which I said was all about ecology and behaviors of shellfish actually lobsters in particular. And I went and worked for a consultancy firm in London, Emrag, and we were doing a lot of evaluation for the European Commission as well as UK government. And, you know, we to start with a lot of that work was around catch setting tax and quotas. But obviously, a lot of that was also not just how do we set that tack and the total allowable catch and the quotas to catch that. But then how how is it being kept? Who is catching it? And yeah, you know, actually measuring kind of the catch against what we've said is allowed to be called is completely rely on who's being allocated it, where they're getting that fish, you know, where they're going and catching that tack.

1:15:14 And, you know, and the trade of that. So when we start when I started doing a lot more policy evaluation for the commission, you know, a lot more of it was focused on on that side of it, the policy of, you know, of how do we implement this with the people rather than the fishery science, which was so often fed in kind of, you know, externally by ISIS, actually, in that in that in that case, right? It's an interesting matter, because like, I remember growing up here and listening to the news, I forget when it actually happened, but it must have been in the 90s. And it was, you know, going back to cod, there was a news piece that was on how there are foreign fishing vessels fishing at our the border of our exclusive economic zone in Canada, and they're fishing for cod and it got to the point where we sent out, you know, Canada, the government of Canada sent out coast guard vessels.

1:16:06 To intercept them and to basically chase them off and to arrest them if they were in our waters. And I think that was the first time where I was like, wow, so people are coming across like cross the Atlantic. These were European vessels across the Atlantic fishing for for for like for cod, and they're not allowed to and they're still doing it. And then you start to think about as I started to go through university, you hear more and more about illegal fisheries and how difficult it is to monitor how difficult it is to stop the illegal fisheries from happening. You can't be out on a vessel. Enforcement's difficult and I learned how more and more how complex it became. Can you talk about, we'll get into, let's get into the report a bit, but just the overall like the where the fishing vessel sort of research is at.

1:16:58 To this point, can you give the audience a bit of an overview of the report and especially like just in the context of where we're at and understanding how fishing vessels are managed worldwide. Yeah. Yes. And as you said at the beginning, again, complexity of this is, is, is, is, is complexity runs through fisheries, right? Completely. And the same in when I talk about these fishing vessels, there's a divert whole diversity of fishing vessels, the gear they use, the size of them, how they operate. I say I tend to work on the largest of these fishing vessels, these distant water fishing vessels and and managing and understanding them is really difficult because by their nature, they're hard to govern.

1:17:44 They operate really far distances from their home port. They may not even go back to their home port for many years at a time because they can they can transship they can offload their catch at sea to another vessel and continue fishing. They can be resupplied refueled. So they're away for long periods of time, often fishing in the high seas or in the waters of other of other of other countries and by their very nature, they're very transient. They can be following in the case of tuna stocks. They could be following these fish all around whole oceanic basins. And so that makes them really hard to observe, even harder to kind of control and understand. And technology, I know you've had colleagues from Global Fishing Watch recently.

1:18:27 Technology is making a lot easier to understand that, to be able to observe those at sea activities. But, you know, still identifying wrongdoing is one thing, actually holding those people to account and actually making sure, you know, the punishments are kind of handed down and are appropriate and are large enough to prevent that activity happening again in the future. That's the difficult bit. That's the bit where technology is helping. But we really need better policy and better enforcement of these regulations. And to bring it to the report, the reason, you know, beneficial ownership comes into that is that often when these vessels are caught doing legal fishing, you know, if there is any punishment, it's usually the crew or the skipper, you know, those who actually have the least kind of power or maybe benefit from these situations, you know, from the fishing enterprise.

1:19:18 They're some they're often ones that are punished while, you know, the owners or the managers kind of get away with it and that those crew can be quite easily replaced. You know, the wing is now a global sector where crew can be flown around from all shipped around from anywhere to replace these crew. Skippers can be easily replaced. The vessel can be renamed, re-flagged to another country. And it goes out the next week and continues fishing, you know. And I think that's the big issue here is these operations, especially these multi-jurisdictional international fishing vessels, they seem to be able to kind of get away with some of these these, you know, fishing, regular breaking fishing rules and regulations.

1:20:04 Yeah. Yeah. So it's complicated. I hope that answered your question. You know, one thing I was thinking, as you were mentioning, I was thinking of like an analogy to that is, you know, when you it's almost like organized crime and sometimes in some cases, sometimes it is. Yeah. But it's almost like organized crime where they they quote unquote, employ, you know, children under the age of a certain age so that when they get caught doing the petty crimes that help, you know, fund these this organized crime, they get less punishment. They go to jail, but they get out, you know, a lot sooner because the punishment is less. And I think the same thing you can say, depending on where they get caught in terms of the fishing vessels, you know, the crew, the skipper, and sometimes the crew is not even supposed to be on that ship.

1:20:51 They're, they're, they're what we call fishery slaves, but they get less of a punishment than what the owners should get. But because you can never really find the owners. It's difficult when you look at the paper trail of who owns what I covered a story a number of years ago on this project. And I remember this podcast, this has been running for about 10 years, this podcast, but I remember this story where we talked about a fishing vessel that was notorious for being reflagged, renamed and caught again and then reflagged, renamed and then, you know, just went around the world and people were trying to catch it. And when they did, they could not figure out who owned it. It was like, you know, it would be like bouncing. It was like one of those mission and possible style shows, but, but fishing related because it became that complex.

1:21:35 And there was a lot, there were a lot of players that some were okay and some were, you know, illegal and part of organized crime. And it, and it just, it was like an untangled web and you just, you just sit there and you're like, how is this like where we've come to, you know, where it becomes even more complex to break down these, these webs and these chains of, you know, of who owns these fishing vessels. And then you look at sort of the infrastructure of how this is done and including this report, like just some of the highlights of this report, I'll just, I'll just kind of name like we, we, like the legal in ownership of fit of like information for our 62% of the vessels is missing.

1:22:18 That's, that's over the majority. That's in. So one in six vessels are legally owned in a country different from their state flag. So we'll talk about that. And actually, let's talk about that now. What does that mean? So that, you know, you have a, you have a flag like the, that you fly on the ship, but then the owner could be in another country. How can they, how can they get away with putting a flag out from a different country if they're, if the owner and say the US or Canada or the UK or other countries? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Re-flagging a vessel is, is, is all legal and above board. You know, this has happened for, for decades. I think, I think initially from in the merchant Navy, you know, merchant shipping would, would, would use these flag reflagged maybe to be able to enter the ship.

1:23:05 Yeah. And to port more easily, things like that. And so they get away with it because it's, it's, it's legal. The issue we have often is particularly with flags, flag States is that there's not always the same regulation or, or, or threshold for entry to be flagged to a nation. So if I had a boat and we had, we had a boat together and we wanted to get flagged in the US, that would be, that would be, there'd be a lot of, you know, legal thresholds for us to meet in order for us to be able to fly that flag. We also have at the, at the other end of the scale, what we call these open registries or flags of convenience. And this is where it can become a bit of an issue because the threshold for entry can be a lot lower. So you may not need any economic kind of tie to that country. You may not even have ever had to set foot in that country.

1:23:52 No, but the register that you can register your vessel on is open. So you'll pay some kind of fee and then you can go in there and I can get the flag off Panama or Belize, for example. And that allows me then to fish under that States jurisdiction. That state is then legally in charge of all the regulatory and social conditions on, on, on my fishing vessel. And if they have much, much lower rules than say the US do, you might want to inspect my fishing vessel, ensure that working conditions are good for my crew. If the other flag where I've gone this flag of convenience don't have that, you know, it means that there's the opportunity for me to get away with not meeting those, those, you know, those, those regulatory kind of threshold.

1:24:39 Threshold doesn't mean that everyone who's using the flag conveniences, you know, is is is is lowering their standards. It means that they're innate, they're allowed to it. It's an opportunity for them to to reduce standards for safety, for how they're fishing, for the control and monitoring of that vessel. Now, and with that, it says just 10 countries legally own more than half of the fleet, which for which data is available. So what does that mean? Like looking at ownership concentration? Yeah, yeah, this is a, this is a really, I feel like this is increasing in the in the in the literature, this this issue because mainly because of the, you know, the the the state of fisheries at the moment, I think as well.

1:25:29 And also just ocean economy broadly is massively expanding. So there's corporate interests in expanding into the ocean and investing into the ocean and get to get a return on investment. And so we kind of chatted before we filmed about this idea or people might have a vision of the fishing industry is these localized fishing vessels going out maybe for the day, really early in the morning, catching some fresh fish and bringing it back to market. And that certainly is the case for the majority actually of fishing boats around the world. But there's also this kind of part of the industry that is, that is in heavily financialized, heavily invested in, you know, in order to make profit.

1:26:11 That's the main goal. It's not a pastime or, you know, a livelihood as such, you know, and this is these corporate actors that are coming in. And we see concentration of ownership for a few reasons. It might be due to the fact that, for example, when a fishery is overfished and there's less fish to catch, you know, and you've got 100 boats that may be a catching that stock if if their captures, you know, what they're allowed to capture is reducing because a fish stock is overfished. It becomes much more difficult for them to turn a profit. And so we often see, you know, people leaving the industry for that reason. And that's when you can get consolidation. You know, you can also get consolidation just when there's so much power starts being concentrated, they essentially have the money and the means to be able to buy out with the people from the fishing industry.

1:26:58 And so, you know, consolidation isn't all this, as you get this concentration of ownership isn't inherently bad, but we need to be able to understand, you know, how bad it is in order for essentially the public to make a call like, do we want our fishing, our fish in the UK to be exploited? Do we want the UK to be exploited by a handful of corporations or do we want it to be spread out between more people? Yeah, I mean, that's really stopping them. And I mean, we've seen other corporations, you know, here in Canada, we see the telecommunications, you know, monopoly of like, you know, two or three companies who pretty much set the standard and don't allow other companies to come in because it's competition for them. They get involved in government, they get more power and stuff. And that happens across industries, including the fishing industry. They want to keep that that power. They want to keep that money to themselves. They don't want other players to come in.

1:27:49 But then if if they make a decision that is not right for for, you know, the the ecosystem, you know, for that fishery, for whatever reason, whether it be more money, more power, that could really turn quickly, you know, as we've seen in other in other industries. So is that is that essentially the worry, the concern on or at least one of the concerns? Yeah, for sure. You know, that when you get these really dominant firms, this, you know, there is the ability for them to first exercise that market power. So they because they're earning such excess profits or can be an excess profits, it allows them to almost be able to set the price, potentially suppress wages or weaken livelihood opportunities for the fisher. Again, I'm not saying this is what happens.

1:28:38 I'm just saying that is a theoretical. This is, you know, what we see in economic theory. The second thing is they're able to like shape the actual conditions of, you know, the food system itself. So they can be determined. You know, what types of, you know, how is this fish process? What is it because they because they have such control over the market, they can determine what are the products? What's the quality of that product that's being fed into the market? Because essentially, you know, end up can monopolize this, this market. And then the third one, as you alluded to that, that these dominant firms can kind of a concern on that is that excess political power, that ability to not only shape the economics or the or the or the physical power.

1:29:21 And that's the physical reality of these food system, food systems, but also the policies. Now, if you have that much power, and as you said, in other systems, you know, we see this a lot, probably a little less in fisheries, but it definitely happens, right? Like, we definitely know that there are there are lobbying. I mean, you know, and so so that's the part of the issue is that is the distribution of power, you know, and that can result as a concentration of that access or or ownership. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Really interesting. Let's talk about registries here. The one of the highlights that really stood out to me, Panama believes Honduras top the list of flagging vessels legally owned by foreign corporations.

1:30:05 Why these countries? Is it just because of the standards that they have? Maybe it's easier to own vessels in that country with that flag, as you mentioned earlier, in terms of like, maybe they can get away with a little bit more, they have a little bit more flexibility than than other countries. Yeah, I mean, these particularly Panama, this is, you know, I guess a political decision to be a flag that allows other, you know, organizations, companies from different countries to flag to them, you know, it brings in it can bring in quite a lot of foreign currency, which can be a really good thing to help, you know, develop the country. Obviously, Panama is intrinsically linked to fishing, right? Right. The Panama Canal. So of course, a lot of this is kind of historical as well and and stuff.

1:30:53 But but yeah, that the openness of the ability to have an open or the presence of that open registry leads them to be to be, you know, the key flag state. So Panama, Belize, 100 Liberia as well, for example, they're big flag states in merchant shipping as well. Fishing obviously is kind of just followed suit. So of course, I don't think it's necessarily and cruise ships as well, actually, in the case of I think Panama and Belize. And so it's that it's that the threshold to entry is much lower. And so, you know, and also it can be some of these flag states can offer kind of more different incentives. So some of them may be lower registration fees, some of them may be anonymity.

1:31:38 Right. So in Panama, we all probably heard about the Panama papers that released in certainly hit the UK very in the news very heavily. So that level of anonymity, anonymity can also be quite attractive to to corporations. And then, as you said, that potentially lower regulations in terms of, you know, crewing regulations or working conditions or maybe even the monitoring of what they're doing at sea. Yeah. So can you just go into a little bit more detail of that, that news that came out that hit that had written a little bit with the anonymity and anonymity? Yes, so I don't I don't I'm not across the story completely, but the Panama Papers was essentially a leak of I think thousands of kind of registered corporations and people that had registered accounts in the Panama in Panama.

1:32:32 And it kind of showed like who they were, what what income they were getting. And, you know, there was quite a few, if I remember at the time, politically, you know, involved people were on this list. Right. Right. It was it was basically a big a big leak on and that led to a lot of these discussions, particularly on beneficial ownership in fact, in Europe of, you know, especially if you're a politician, but but for, you know, these people is is what do you own where in the world, you know, because part of this of knowing these owners is is also from a government perspective, being able to levy them and tax them appropriately because, you know, that's an issue, particularly in the EU is if you don't know what what investments and interests they own, it becomes very difficult to know, you know, what's a fair taxation for these for these people.

1:33:24 Yeah. And where are those? Where's where's where's where is their money being invested elsewhere in the world? Yeah. And then is it, you know, on the up and up to, you know, if that money is being invested is where it's going. Yeah. Transparency is such a big key that gets lost in a lot of these things. We talk about, you know, concentrations and what countries hold a lot of the flag ownership and so forth. We look at impacts on those states, on those coastal states and how, you know, this type of work impacts those. So like, for instance, like, how does a opaque ownership, like reduce revenue and enforcement capacity for some of these coastal nations?

1:34:07 Yeah, so for the coastal nations, as we talked about before, you know, a big part of it for enforcement is knowing who is accountable for that for that vessel. As I said, you know, you might you might you might find a vessel doing some illegal fishing and you can stop it. And, you know, at that point, all you have is the crew and the people on the boat. And that's not always sufficient to prevent that boat from being able to continue in the future. Yeah. And then I mean, one of the other issues is, you know, if I'm a coastal state and vessels are coming to fish in my water or wanting to flag to that, not knowing who they are means I don't really know the background of them. I don't know what other fisheries they're involved with, they've had, you know, broken the rules elsewhere, whether this vessel that's coming to fish here now has fished in, you know, all these other coastal states and maybe has been kicked out of them.

1:34:58 You know, I don't know that if I don't know who the owner is and what are the interests that they're connected to. And I think that's the big, a big part of it as well is knowing who they are because, you know, and the risks involved, you know, it's hard to do a full risk assessment if I don't know who the companies and the people are behind this fishing vessel. Do you have like a specific, like real world example of something that's happened, you know, where like the, you know, these coastal nations kind of paid the price or, you know, or we're starting to see this type of action happening in a coastal nation? And not off the top of my head, but I will give a good example of I think the difficulties that not just coastal states, but anyone involved in fisheries enforcement have is this example of a policy brief that I collaborated with my colleagues in Oceania, Europe with, I think it was about six months ago, about this, this series of vessels all owned by one company, they're all named after different whales.

1:36:02 It was like, you know, the fin whale, the second right whale. I can't remember, there's about six of these vessels and we kind of did all this analysis looking at where they'd been fishing. Many of them have been caught illegally fishing in the past. And we looked at their history of ownership and flagging and where they'd been fishing. You know, ownership had changed between different EU member states to Russia back to EU member states and where they were flagged to, you know, have no connection to who owned them or where they were fishing. And we wrote this report kind of saying, you know, there's some kind of link to eat an EU member state here. This is worrying. And by the time we gave, I think we gave the company notice, you know, just to make sure we're writing about this company, they should have notice.

1:36:46 About a week later, when we actually launched the report the day before all these vessels were reflagged. And so the report was instantly out of date. And that just shows you how how quickly these vessels can move. You know, you think you've got them pinned and then suddenly they're reflagged somewhere else. And so if you're working with the flag state where they are now trying to, you know, get them hold them to account for some of their previous actions. You know, suddenly they're based on the other side of the world. By the time you're actually trying to get some movement. So, you know, the speed at which this happens is is quite surprising. These vessels can almost disappear like a magic trick reappear.

1:37:27 That's fascinating in a way, you got to give them their respect in terms of how quickly they can maneuver. They've obviously seen this happen before and they've been able to overcome it. How do we like, you know, as people who want to manage fisheries better, how do we prevent this from happening? Like what's what's the mechanism that we as people who, you know, scientists and conservationists and people all around the world, like it doesn't matter what country you live in. Like you can't we can't let this happen. How does this how do we stop this this type of behavior? Yeah, yeah, I mean, right. Yeah, I know. If I knew, I mean, I'd be out of work tomorrow if we answered it.

1:38:11 But I think it's again, it's incredibly complex, right? I think there's multiple parts at which we need better policies, better regulations and better implementation of them. So, you know, at the flag state level, when a vessel is being flagged to your country, you know, to your flag to fly your flag is to ensure that you're collecting that information. Yeah, okay, I want to know the beneficial owners. That's the the individual human at the top of that ownership change, because we haven't even talked about that, actually, the fact that you're not just one company and a person, there can be a network of shell companies. So, so, so, so, so at the flag state level, it's that it's okay, you want to flag to my I need to know who are the people behind this show me, you know, I need to know all that kind of ownership chain behind you before you can even be registered, you know, then ideally that these flag states automate that information public or to the extent that they're able to. And then there's the coastal states, that's where these vessels then go fishing. And again, that's another opportunity to say, you know, you have license to now come and fish our waters and take our some of our fish to do that, you know, here's some thresholds you have to meet some standards you have to meet.

1:39:25 Yeah, and again, one of those could be, you know, we want to know the history of your fishing, where you fished for the last six months, for say, like some some VMS tracking data. Yeah, and as well, yeah, who, who are your owners and what other vessels today own what, what the risks involved of us allowing your vessel to come in, enter our waters and take our publicly owned resource. Yeah, so so there's there as well. And then there's also the market state. So once that fish is kind of is, you know, ultimately that fish is worthless until it comes to land until it's landed and actually sold. And so through the port state, that's where they had landed the fish and then the market state where that fish is eventually sold for consumption. You know, you can you can bring in regulations there like trying to trace that fish like, can you show me who caught it and, you know, and that ownership chain.

1:40:14 Yeah. So there's many places and again, this is why makes it hard because of course, if any of those places, there's a weak link, you know, it's all your forefather. Yeah. And of course, everybody's gonna go and get their ship flagged in that in that state because that's where it's easier. It's you know, it's very similar to, you know, when we look at fisheries, the actual fisheries and the supply chain of those fisheries. I think the Marine Stewardship Council has been pretty adamant about tracking where from the point of catch all the way to the point of sale of how like let's let's track who's involved in that that supply chain. So it makes it more transparent. You can tell, you know, which fish is there. You can decrease, you know, the the I guess the number of times there's fraud like fisheries fraud.

1:41:02 I saw this Oceana reports a number of years ago highlighted where I think in some cases in Toronto is like like 48% of the fish were like fraud fraudulent depending on the fish and which is scary. Like you if you try to buy something that's sustainable, but it's not the fish that you think you're buying, which is an unsustainable caught fish. You know, you're you're you just unknowingly, you know, participate in this kind of action. It's almost like we need the same thing for the ownership of the vessels, you know, like just making sure that we can track and like take away these shell companies and it's like owner. All right, here's the owner. This is the vessel that they own. Here's where they have all their flag vessels and do they have a good report in one country compared to another country? And if they don't, maybe they should pay for that by not being able to flag a vessel in another country and they're just able to flag, you know, in one or two, one or two countries and be monitored specifically for for that action.

1:42:03 I think that's you know, is that like, I mean, I feel like that's a fair and transparent way of of tracking these vessels doesn't have to be available to the public, but to some of these organizations, like maybe Oceana or somebody like that, where they can actually track these this type of of I guess business chain, you know, who owns these vessels. Yeah, I mean, that's the goal. Yeah. We campaign Oceana and many of our NGO colleagues for publicly disclosed ownership databases that that is that is that that is what we want. That is our gold standard to have beneficial ownership of EU flag vessels at minimum in the EU to be publicly available.

1:42:46 Then for these member states to make their citizens and the companies registered there to also disclose what what financial interests or other interests they have in in other countries and for that to be publicly disclosed. But we know that some countries do collect this information, but maybe don't share it. We also know that in some countries, you know, different government departments might collect this information and don't then share it with the fisheries ministry or the fisheries authorities. So there's an issue of the data either not existing when it does exist as an issue of it not being shared properly. And then we have this issue of the data not aligning. So, you know, the the definition of a beneficial owner or how we identify it.

1:43:30 Identify that ownership doesn't match up. So, you know, this makes it really difficult for for outsiders, as it were, like myself who want access this to understand that better to try and communicate that to the public. You know, often we we pay all the organizations who collect this information. So even the information used in this report isn't technically public information because it's behind the paywall. Right. So and it's not a small pay. You know, it's not significant. So it's not available to the majority of people. Majority of people in a country can't find out who the owners of these fishing vessels are that are fishing this publicly owned resource.

1:44:11 And again, this doesn't say there aren't great examples of where we're seeing improvement. You know, obviously I tend to focus on the worst examples because that's why we're trying to get the most improvement, right? Right. Of course. Yeah. If you can get the improvement for that, then you're already increasing the level of efficiency and protection. You know, this is a big report. It's an important report for my audience. Like what were the big like policy recommendations in this report and policy brief? Yeah. So the main one is as I was alluding to earlier about how do we try and fix this is for flag states to a collect beneficial ownership information.

1:44:53 Or at least, you know, this report we focused on what we call the legal owners, which is the corporations, the beneficial owners are the usually the shareholders that the humans at the top of that chain. So it's for flag states to collect that information, you know, when they license a vessel or when they renew a license and to ensure that information is kept up to date. As we said earlier, this this can change so quickly. Right. So for flag states to collect that and ideally make that publicly available. And for the companies themselves to disclose to their their their their states of incorporation. So that's where those companies are based.

1:45:34 Those countries should be asking their companies to tell them, like, what do you own? You know, what what investments do you have around the world? Because it'd be good to know that. We have to know if you know if we have a citizen that's invested in fishing off of Namibia or in the Pacific, you know, Pacific Islands. Right. And I think as well, one of the big recommendations is just for there to be a lot more effort in kind of sharing information, understanding these systems. You know, what do we know? What are you doing in your authorities and your enforcement agencies? Can you share that with other enforcement agencies so that we sort of everybody's brought up to that standard?

1:46:14 Because we know the EU have one of the most sophisticated systems for trying to stop you in the world and still, you know, they have to get it right 100 percent of the time. The EU fishes only have to get it right once. Right. Right. Right. Can they kind of share this knowledge and training with with other coastal states to try and improve the overall system? And then the final thing we kind of in the report we suggested was around ensuring that all large scale fishing vessels have a unique identifying number. So ideally, an IMO number. This is the International Maritime Organization. And and this is a number that's unique to a fishing vessel, regardless of they repaint it, rename it, reflag it or the ownership changes.

1:47:04 It stays with that that fishing vessel in the in the US and Canada and the UK are the only place I've had cars. You know, we have a VIN, right, vehicle identification. And it's like hammered into the chassis of your car. So it'd be similar to that. So regardless of what modifications and what happens that boat, that boat is identifiable throughout its lifetime. And then connected to that in the IMO in the IMO registry, you know, I think we believe they should be then asking for ownership information. And of course, just with a car when you know that VIN exchanges the pink slips, you know, the ownership, you have to report that, right? You just can't buy a car and go driving it the next day. No.

1:47:46 But you can buy a fishing vessel and start going, you know, fishing the next day. Unreal. It's a little bit more complicated than that. But simply that's the way is like identify these fishing vessels and have that linked to ownership. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's that's yeah, that's that makes sense to me. All of these. This makes sense to me, obviously, not as easy to implement as we we hope. But hopefully we can get there with the added pressure of, you know, reports like these to say, hey, you know, this is what's happening. You guys, we all need to know about this. And we need to start putting pressure on on people. As a researcher, I'm curious, what was the most surprising reveal that you have come across when, you know, creating a report like this or contributing to a report like this?

1:48:33 Like for you, out of all of these items that we discussed, what was the most surprising for that for you, like the that you uncovered? Yeah, that's a really good question, actually. I think some of the surprises I thought might happen, the surprise was maybe the scale. So in terms of data gaps, you know, we knew that we're going to be data gaps. Yeah, data was going to be patchy and imperfect. I didn't know that would be this level, you know, some of these vessels that we were trying to identify in the in the IMO registry didn't even have like information like the length of it. You know, which like surely is quite a standard piece of information. How big is this boat was not available for all these vessels and obviously the ownership information being being missing for two thirds of the fishing fleet was quite surprising.

1:49:27 And there was a few, I think, surprises that, you know, and of course, I work on in session on global fisheries, but I, you know, I can't have a knowledge of all these different coastal states. And there was a few surprises like Argentina popping up as like having quite high proportions of foreign ownership of its fishing fleet. And I assume I think that that would be kind of a historical, you know, there was a lot of Spanish ownership, for example, there. And I'm probably also access to some of the fish stocks that are in that part of the world for particular companies and fishing fleets. So there was a few surprises like that that popped up and there was a few individual cases. I quite liked looking at individual vessels.

1:50:10 You know, of course, I love this high level information. But it says individual little stories of like a vessel that's like registered here, flagged their fishing here. And we did an EU specific policy brief that that went into a bit more detail on these individual vessels. We kind of made passports for them and had all these stamps of where they'd where they'd gone and fish and how the ownership changed. So I think they're the ones I find maybe the most surprising is, you know, you're finding links between, as I said, Europe, Russia and the US and West Africa. And it's just how does that happen? Like how how these humans involved that have these investments and connections in all these places?

1:50:54 And, you know, we're just looking this data, this kind of paper trail. But obviously, these are all, you know, deals or purchases and exchanges that happened. And yeah, I think I think they're the ones that kind of surprised me the most with those individual little stories that I'd love to know more about. Yeah, absolutely. Here's an interesting idea. You know, they how they have like, you know, you can you can track animals that are tagged, you know, like fish or sharks or whale sharks and so forth on an app. Imagine if you could track fishing vessels, like individual fishing vessels and it'd be like, oh, how are they all the way in the Indian Ocean when they started off in the Pacific or, you know, be able to see and almost like it's it's almost like highlighting them in a surprising way, but a more transparent way where people can actually see where these fishing vessels go and where they unload and think they're going to be able to see where they're going.

1:51:42 So, yeah, I think, you know, if you could just take a look at the show and see what you can do, you know, if you can just talk about what you have, you know, a lot of things like that. That would be, I feel like an interesting app that might highlight some of the nefarious ongoings of some of these vessels and what they're up to. And they probably wouldn't like that app very much, but I think that would be interesting for organizations such as Oceana and even individuals like me just to be able to like, oh, this is weird, like I'm trying individual vessel. of fish and watch. Increasingly, we can we can map more vessels still, still by no means all of these vessels. And as there's really cool research time to look at that now, like the behaviors of them. And, you know, one of my colleagues, Keiko Nomura looked at how different fleets interact or potentially avoid each other. You know, there can be kind of this, especially for tuna stocks, you know, there can be a collaboration once you find the schools between different fleets.

1:52:38 Maybe they have the same owners, we don't know. And then others would fish in completely different areas, like almost like this avoidance. And similarly, with with fishing in the high seas and these different systems that are out there, you know, we're learning more and more that the high seas isn't just this, you know, blank homogenous desert, but has these kind of networks of systems and underwater mountains and seeing how these different vessels, you know, time it so they all arrive at the same time. Yeah, I think this is a really exciting, you know, area of research at the moment. Yeah, absolutely. This is this has been wonderful. My last question that I give people when I interview, especially on things like reports like these, my audience is very motivated to help, you know, they want to help, sometimes they feel a little bit out of touch in terms of how they can help. This is a big deal. This is a huge, huge undertaking that that you and your colleagues have have done. How can individuals help when they listen to this podcast, or probably like, man, this sucks, like all this stuff is happening.

1:53:49 There's a lot of problems, you know, there are people who are working on it, but it's like they feel a little helpless, you know, and they want it, they want to do more. So from an individual standpoint, how would you recommend people what what actions people can take to to help in this area? Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, I asked myself a lot as well, even just about, you know, what can I do more than, you know, sometimes publishing a report can feel great, but what more can I do? And I think if there's a campaign, you know, especially if you're in a country that, you know, is a flag of convenience or has a huge fishing industry, you know, trying to support campaigns that are pushing for, for more transparency or, you know, or better regulation of these fisheries, whether that's, you know, industry led, you know, by these kind of fishing corporations or small scale fishers or different industry bodies, or whether it's led by NGOs or, or, you know, groups, I would say try and support that they're often trying to get people to add their names to petitions and send emails and stuff like that. And I think for me, fundamentally, that's the biggest part is, you know, these emails and petitions, ultimately, as they're being sent to the politicians, right, is, you know, is in your political power, it feels often, increasingly, in fact, that we have very little of it. But what little we do, you know, we can put to, you know, to candidates that maybe think about these issues and particularly environmental issues. And I think that's,

1:55:22 that's a really strong way to, to be able to support these causes, which hopefully that's, that's encouraging. And it's just all right. Well, vote and vote and write emails. But well, I'll tell you, I mean, it makes a difference. I mean, we have listenership in over 150 different countries, you know, it's not just the UK, it's not just Canada, it's not the US, it's not just Australia or India, Brazil or Argentina, as we mentioned, it's all these different countries. And if we have people that are listening to this in a variety of different countries, then maybe if we all start talking to our representatives on a regular basis and get to know them and build relationships, like it's not just a matter of just writing to I feel like it's a matter of like, really getting to know and having those those representatives get to know you. And what's important to you, it could just be it may be environmental might be for different aspects of what's important to you, but really understanding that relationship between us and our government representatives and getting to know them, whoever they are, whatever side of the aisle they they're on is to is a big is a big thing.

1:56:31 And probably a podcast episode in and of itself, or series of them in and of itself to get to know but you know, the work that you and your colleagues are doing, then I think is imperative, we need this information. This information is not found regularly, as you mentioned, it's difficult to track down, even finding out the length of certain boats is difficult, which is like you would think would be common information, the first information that they would put in and and sometimes it's just not. And so we appreciate all the work that you've done. And I think that's important, not only for this report, but in the past and research into this type of of aspect of fisheries. It's very important. And we really appreciate you coming on and sharing all this information with us so that we can have more knowledge to live for better ocean. So we appreciate your work. And we'd love to have you back on some time and talk about updates and hopefully seeing some progress in some changes that countries have made in the way they they track their fishing vessels.

1:57:28 Thank you very much for having me on this. You know, I love talking about this stuff. And so happy to find a fellow person to talk and an audience who are keen to listen. Absolutely. Wonderful. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Cheers, Andre. Thank you, Dan, for joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast was great to have you on. It was great to be able to try and detangle some of the complexities of global fishing vessels and just what they can get away with. It's surprising about what they can get away with. And surprising that a lot of this has gone on for a long time. What always surprises me is when you try and track down who owns a fishing vessel is just like a web. It just goes all over. You can be pinged all over around the world looking at shell companies and then, you know, depending on where they're from or how it goes at one shell company to another to another to another all over the world.

1:58:14 And it's really interesting to me and surprising how people can get away with this for so long. Hopefully this report helps detangle this and a system is in place to track how vessels are owned and who owns these vessels right to the actual company that makes the revenue from this. And let's be honest, the fishing fleets that are doing illegal things. It's the crew that pays the price, but the companies rarely do. And that's a shame. And that should not happen again. So we are going to continue to talk about this in the future. But this episode really highlights a lot of the issues that are around and what can be done as recommendations to help get rid of this whole problem. And so I want to thank Dan again for joining us. We're going to put links to Oceana's report in the show notes so you can get access to that. If this is your first time listening to the episode, I'd love for you to subscribe. Follow however you do, whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to this on your favorite podcast app. But I want to thank Dan for joining us and I want to thank you for listening. I really do appreciate all the support that you've given this podcast. We're getting a lot of views.

1:59:14 We're getting a lot of downloads. We're getting a lot of listens. We're getting a lot of comments and engagement. It's always great. And if you want to connect with me, you can do so on Instagram at howdepro.com. And I'll try to answer as soon as I can. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin from the true North strong and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.