Hidden costs of seafood: Why “Sustainable” Tuna Is Being Paid for by Taxpayers

0:00 What if the multi-billion dollar tuna industry you thought was thriving is actually being kept alive by government support, which means public taxpayer money, and with the health of the ocean and the workers often paying the price. Today we're unpacking how Europe's tuna fleets mask losses with subsidies and why that matters to sustainability and what it means for the future of global tuna fishing. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the ocean Podcast. 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 Lewin, marine scientist and science communicator here to tell you 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.

0:43 On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about how governments are propping up the tuna fishing industry by paying for subsidies to its operators, to the actual fishers, not to the whole area of tuna fishing, the processors, the plants, the seafood markets, and all that kind of stuff that provides a lot of jobs. This is a complex issue, but we're gonna be focusing on the actual fishers, the people that go out and fish for tuna and what subsidies they're getting and why it's so important they get those subsidies and what it's doing. If they didn't have those subsidies, what it would do to the tuna fleet in Spain and France. That's what we're gonna be focusing on today. There was a new paper that just came out talking about this very same subject, And so I looked at the paper. I wanted to talk about it ' cause I think it's really important.

1:24 So we're gonna get into it. But before we do, I just want to let you know I've reopened up and kind of redesigned my Patreon. The idea around it is to support what I'm doing. I am trying to build a network of podcasts on wildlife specifically the oceans. And I'm doing this because not a lot of people do that. Organizations try to put out podcasts. And they come in. They often fizzle out, not their fault. It's a lot of work. I'm trying to build this out independently so I'm not just part of one organization, but I can provide a voice for many organizations and many people within the field of wildlife biology, ocean biology, ocean science, marine biology, ocean conservation, whatever you'd like to call it.

2:06 And so it's really important for me to do this. It's a passion in my life and I don't always get support from organizations or grants and things like that. I'm a for-profit company. Your help as I was crowdfunding some of these and just supporting the cost of putting out the websites and the cost of my time and my equipment and everything like that, that I put together really is helpful and also to make a living out of it. So if you enjoy what you've been hearing over the last week, if this is your first week or the first episode, or you've been with me for the last 10 years, I would love your support. If you wanna support me, go to speak up for blue.com/patreon. But let's get back into what you're here to listen to and that is independent podcasts on ocean conservation, talking about tuna fleets, which we're gonna be talking about, and the subsidies that they get because subsidies don't get talked about often.

2:53 Let's be honest here. It's boring to talk about. It's not the sexy part. You want to hear like, are the tuna fish going down in stock? Is it a sustainable thing? Is it not? Look, there are many people working within this industry to say, whether the stocks are doing well or not. A lot of tuna fish stocks are not doing the best. There's a big fishery around it. There are a lot of people, a lot of organizations who are working to make it better and those are working really well. But there's still a lot of work that we have to do. But the thing is, is tuna as an industry is a big billion dollar industry. And so to make sure that that billion in dollar industry is put together, subsidies have to be used in certain aspects to prop up that activity. And in this case, we're talking about tuna fishing.

3:34 The fishing needs to be propped up in certain countries. So today we're gonna be talking about French and Spanish companies that are looking at the focuses on the EU purse seine fleets. And so that's what we're gonna be focusing on today. 'cause research has analyzed more than a decade of data of company-level financial data. So this is not stock assessments or anything like that. We're looking at levels of fish. We're looking at company-level financial data with the focus of EU purse seine fleets mainly French and Spanish companies. Okay? So this is not the entire fleet by any means, but this is what we're getting a subsection of that, which is really great. So They separate the actual operating performance from public financial support, which is the subsidies that we're talking about. So this is not just ideology.

4:15 This is not just what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing. This is actually accounting. We're getting into the forensics accounting of this fleet, okay? And I think it's really important that we do it. So here, let's just go right into it. The core findings really is the profits disappear once without the subsidies. So essentially the subsidies are for fuel tax exemptions, which are among the largest subsidies. And then of course, the EU funds and pay fishing access fees to coastal habitats to different countries. So whatever countries they go around to, they get that. If we remove the support for those two items, most fleets operate under a loss. So the fishing boats and the fleets operate under a loss. In some years, subsidies exceed reported profits. Fishing is a very difficult industry to get into.

4:55 It really works off of what's happening in the ocean. We know that there's a lot of disturbances in the ocean from a lot of different ways. Climate change, overfishing, plastic pollution, bad water quality, but also we just have fluctuations in population sizes, just in general. And all of those are from a cumulative impact. All of those disturbance I just mentioned will have an effect on that, but also just natural variability will have an effect on that. Sometimes tuna fish are doing well in population, sometimes they're not doing so well in population. That could be due to a number of different issues. Right. And so it's not necessarily that the people that are doing it are doing the wrong thing. It's just the fact that they continue to fish and there's variability. And there's also a lot of disturbances and there are some bad players in this industry as in any industry, That's not the majority that are bad, but they have a living to do and they have to go out and they have to fish these fish.

5:39 So the question really becomes obvious here, if these fleets lose money without the subsidies, why do governments keep paying them? Why are they losing money if they don't get subsidy? So here it's, so they wanna prevent economic collapse. So without these subsidies, fleets would shrink or disappear. Vessel decommissioning, port closures and bankruptcies would also follow. So the subsidies act as a life support. Governments are not just rewarding success, they are preventing the collapse of this fleet. And then of course there are jobs in political stability when it really comes down to it. So tuna fleet support jobs beyond fishing. So processing, shipping, ports, logistics. It's a lot of different jobs that are out there. So obviously, you know when you have job losses and it's concentrated one specific fleet, that's not really great especially politically sensitive areas or coastal regions, right?

6:24 When you have like ports closed down, logistics closed down, shipping, processing, the fleet itself, a lot of people will get pretty angry when that went down. If you don't realize that or if you didn't know about the cod industry in Canada, on the east coast, when that cod fishery just basically bottomed out and it got closed, people were rioting in the government buildings back in the early nineties. It was a crazy scene because they lost their livelihoods and it could have been prevented by the government, but they didn't prevent it. It could have been prevented by a lot of people that didn't prevent, and those people paid with some scary things that are happening. So paying subsidies is often cheaper politically than dealing with the unemployment. That's really what it comes down to in some cases. It's like political parties that are in power.

7:06 They would like to stay in power. They would like people to have jobs. So if they have to pay a little bit of money to get more people to stay in jobs, that's great, but who pays for the consequences around these subsidies that are paying for people to have these jobs, right? That's what we're really kind of coming down to. Is it worth it? And that is for each country to answer, I guess, is really what it comes down to. And it depends on where you fall in protecting the environment or protecting people's jobs or just, protecting political power. Like it really just depends. Because sometimes, the people in power are looking out for a lot of different things, not just the environment, a lot of times, not the environment, but looking out for a lot of things like human rights and sort of international relations and so forth. So it could be a very complicated and web-like system that you're like, Hey, I don't like what you're doing over here with like, subsidizing the tuna fleet.

7:52 But I really like you for standing up for democracy or whatever you're doing and standing up for this. And so it becomes difficult when you're looking at the overall picture. But when it comes to this, the subsidy is really preventing just the collapse of the industry. So let's talk about not only just the countries itself, but just the influence of the tuna industry and the geopolitics and how this tuna fleet brings it all together. So the EU fleets fish in foreign waters through access agreements. So, like I said before, you know, the EU will pay those countries to get access, but then the EU fishing fleets will go in there and fish. That's the benefit of being part of the EU. The EU has all these relationships with different countries and you can go in there and you can fish. These agreements are essentially part of a broader diplomatic and economic relationships managed by the EU, the European Union.

8:37 That's what this really comes down to, as I mentioned. So fishing is not just about fish anymore. It's about influence, presence, and leverage within those countries. And I think that is, again, talking to the complexities of how these things kind of get lost in the moment or in the whole web-like structure of government relations, and I think it's really difficult to kind of get out of. Subsidies lower costs for the market, right? For the fleets, especially in fuel. This allows EU fleets to go further and to compete with other lower cost global fleets. The distant fleet for China is probably the biggest fishing fleet around. They go all over the world and it's cheaper to let them go all over the world for China and like go and fish and they come back with all these fish and Asian markets, European markets, and every and other others.

9:23 But it's a lower cost fishery. Right, because they don't have maybe the same regulations or costs that are associated with their fleet. So subsidies protect position, not necessarily the performance and the sustainability of the fishery. Now, of course, subsidies have existed for decades. We know this in a lot of different industries, oil and gas industry, and the fishing industry. Removing them creates immediate pain and also delayed benefits. So it's like when you put in a marine protected area. Putting in the marine protected area immediately takes away that area from being fished, if that's what you're trying to protect. And so a lot of the fishing community is like, well, I don't want to do that 'cause that gives me no access for at least three or four years until this fishery rebuilds within this marine protected area.

10:05 And we start to see a spillover effect outside of the boundaries so that they can fish again. But they don't want to do that because it's not as if they're making the big bucks. These are a lot of times they're artisanal fishers. It's not industrial fishing. So they're just like, why am I gonna do that? But then they see the benefits later on and they're like, oh, I'm glad we had the short-term pain for the long-term gain. But it's very difficult to convince fishers and anybody to go through that short term pain when you in itself are not going through that pain, but the people are. And so the government has a very difficult problem at hand to convince people to do that. So it's easier for governments to just keep paying subsidies than to redesign the system. Know what government wants to be the government to know, like they've taken away something from people and caused people pain because that means they won't get back in.

10:47 I would love for governments to start just doing like, Hey, this is for the best of you guys, and even if we're gonna do it, even if it costs us power later on. You'll never see a government do that. I would be very surprised if we see a government do it. In fact, I would vote more for a government who did that because they understand that politics is not just about staying in power. Politics is about the people and what's best for the people. And if that is part of like your short term pain, if you're the short term pain part, well then that's your, the short term pain. But you did a good thing to set them up for better later on, right? So I think that is something to keep an eye out for. But you won't see many political parties do that. So like why is all this, well, I'm talking about all this, but why does it matter for sustainability? That's really the question when it comes down here.

11:27 The subsidies enable longer trips and higher fishing effort. So they can go out for longer. They can look around more for these tuna to make sure that they catch them and they can catch as many as they can. This contributes to, of course, the excess capacity. So the fact that they can go out further, they can go out longer, they can fish more cause they don't have to pay as much in fuel, that allows 'em to bring more back, but doesn't necessarily allow them to get outta the grips or the tuna to get outta the grips from these fishers. They're able to fish longer. Economic pressure encourages cost cutting elsewhere, including labor conditions. So not only are they going out for longer, but people are away from their families for longer. People are away from land for longer. So they can go out for a couple years or they can go for a year. Some boats will go out for years.

12:08 And then the working conditions become worse because think about it. When you're out on a fishing boat, you're out on a boat for, like if you say you go out for two weeks or even a month or even two months, or even six months, you're out for that boat for six months. You're not seeing your family. You're not on back on land. You're working probably seven days a week. 12 hours a days, I'm sure in some cases, maybe even more. And so you don't get that break, you don't get holidays. You don't get access to your family after your nine to five, like this is serious business. And if you're out for longer than a month or two, the working conditions get really worse. People make mistakes. It can get dangerous, and some people just don't even care. That's where you start to get into a lot of labor laws being broken in international waters or even in national waters. That could be a problem. A fleet that should scale down, it never does.

12:50 But it should scale down, not only for the fish, but also for the people. So artificial profitability delays hard, but necessary changes. That's a big thing with this paper that's come out. This creates tension when you're looking at subsidies when it comes to sustainability messaging. So many sustainability frameworks focus on stock health and compliance. So there are a number of different organizations that are really looking at science-based management. They're looking at best practices. How can we fish better, lower the bycatch, catch, you know, tuna fish, but not too much and still make it sustainable. We're looking at very much the science aspect, the life science aspect of it, not necessarily the economic science aspect of it. So this paper shows that stock health does not necessarily equal to a healthy economic model because that the economic model is propped up by a subsidy that if it wasn't there, it would like pretty much bottom out the fishery in specific aspects.

13:40 So a fishery can follow the rules and still be fundamentally broken. So it can still look at sustainability and compliance, but it could still prop up something that probably isn't that gonna be that sustainable and is kind of contributing to the unsustainable part of that. So when we look at the risk of the fishery, the public money is absorbing the risk. The subsidy is absorbing the risk to prop up this fleet and saying, Hey, this is actually profitable, but is it profitable? Maybe not for certain aspects of it, but maybe the latter half of it. The selling of tuna 'cause selling tuna is pretty profitable. So private companies still retain access and market share, which is great for them, but the public has to pay for that. And environmental and social costs remain externalized. So the fact is, is like when we look at public subsidies, so taxpayer money is propping up an industry that would not be there if there was no subsidy for it.

14:26 The political parties that are doing this, the governments that are doing this are doing this because they don't wanna look bad and they don't want the whole system to shut down. And so if the system shuts down, they probably won't get voted back in. 'cause a lot of people feel bad for people losing their jobs and they, although a lot of people don't want to pay for subsidies to protect the environment, or that is not protecting the environment, a lot of people still want people to have jobs. If that's a small payment for that, which will be better. But obviously the political parties that are in power, they benefit from this. The environmental social costs still remain externalized obviously, and the system looks stable only because taxpayers and ecosystems pay the hidden cost. That's the only reason. That's what happens is these taxpayers and ecosystems are paying the cost. So the authors argue there's need for change of this paper.

15:09 So first they want to phase out harmful subsidies. So the subsidies that pay for fuel exemptions, that's especially the ones that they wanna look after. Increase the transparency around fleet economics. So make sure that people know about this. Align labor standards with sustainability goals. So making sure that people are being treated properly and the fish are being treated properly, like they're not being overfished. That's really big. And of course, design policies that reward resilience, not dependence. So design the fishers that actually change so that they don't have to rely on subsidies. They actually change, and they find a way to pay for the fuel themselves. Pay for the access themselves. So sustainability must include economics and ecosystems together. That's a huge, huge thing. And that's really the point of this episode is to make sure that sustainability includes economics, people, and ecosystems altogether.

15:55 That's gonna be a big part moving forward. I'd love to hear what you think about what's gonna happen to this fishery. Do you think that these subsidies should be removed or a change should happen or phased out at some point? 'cause I think if you just remove it, you're gonna get immediate pain and you're gonna see a lot of people pissed off, essentially. Obviously we don't wanna see anybody losing their jobs, but it's an interesting conundrum that they're in, phasing out these harmful subsidies, especially the fuel exemptions is really important. Looking at the transparency, of course around fleet economics and of course, aligning standards and sustainability goals. I'd love to hear your thoughts on all this. Let me know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube. If you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, you can go to speak up for blue.com/feedback to let me know what you think of this episode.

16:38 Love to have a dialogue with you. Of course, you can look at me up on Instagram at How to Protect the ocean. Of course, anywhere else on TikTok. I'm Speak up for Blue. There's gonna be a bunch of links in the show notes. Love to hear from you 'cause that's what this is. This is opening up a conversation so that we can continue it and talk about more about fisheries. The next episode's gonna have fisheries. We're gonna be talking about international fisheries, the High Seas Treaty, and Squid Fisheries. We're gonna talk about that on the next episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. But for now, thank you for joining me. This has been another exciting episode of the How to Protect the ocean Podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin from the true nor strong and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.