Labour abuses, including modern slavery, are ‘hidden subsidies’ that allow distant-water fishing fleets to remain profitable and promote overfishing, new research from the University of Western Australia and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia has found.
Labour abuses, including modern slavery, are ‘hidden subsidies’ that allow distant-water fishing fleets to remain profitable and promote overfishing, new research from the University of Western Australia and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia has found.
By combining fisheries data from the Sea Around Us initiative at UBC with country-level data on modern slavery, the researchers found that countries whose fleets rely heavily on government subsidies, fish far away from home ports, and fail to comprehensively report their actual catch, tend to fish beyond sustainable limits and are at higher risk of labour abuses.
“Crews on vessels from China, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Russia are particularly at high risk because of a lack of regulatory oversight in those countries combined with the complexities of jurisdiction at sea. This makes it easier to force people to work excessively long hours, often under appalling conditions, to extract as much fish as possible in exchange for a low – or zero – pay,” said David Tickler, lead author of the study from the University of Western Australia.
With global marine fish catches declining at a rate of 1.2 million tonnes per year since the mid-1990s, the only way many industrial countries’ fleets have been able to remain profitable is by receiving government subsidies. However, labour costs can typically only be lowered by reducing worker pay and conditions.
Continue reading at University of British Columbia.
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