After the third London conference on Illegal Unreported Unregulated (IUU) Fishing in 2007 there was a tough reaction against NGO allegations that certain fish markets were laundering illegal catch. Chris Leftwich, The Chief Inspector to the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers (in charge of Billingsgate in London) was one who took the NGOs to task.
This year, Leftwich was on the platform at the event*. He publicly rebutted the charge of wholesale fish laundering at Billingsgate and also called for a radical revamp of traceability to tackle what he sees as the constant threat of illegal fish to small fish merchants and the need for constant vigilance.
This year the organisers also made sure there were fishermen and owners speaking, producing a more balanced picture with practical steps to catch poachers and protect honest operators from criminal branding.
The law
“There is no requirement in EU law”, Leftwich told the meeting, to trace [the seafood] all the way back to the supplier. There was a higgledy-piggledy variety of regulations about vessels, cold store and factory labelling. Supposedly indelible labels were illegible, content often differed from the label, compounded by different specie names in different countries. Australia had now shown this could be cracked, with one name one fish he said, adding: “Until we get that you are not going to stop this IUU fishing; because people are going to trade the fish with various names and bypass the system.” Poachers should be exposed on the Web he said and global traceability needed standard international action to clear up a scenario of “Lack of resources, inconsistent labelling, inconsistent names of fish, regulations [being] far too vague [and] a lack of general information”. For example, the EU regulations say a label must carry one of 12 catch areas. One is the “Pacific”. How vague is that, he asked, when the Pacific is as big as the world’s total landmass.
“If you went round my markets and asked half the merchants ‘What is IUU?’ they would just give you a blank stare. Unless we get consistent information included, I think the regulations are totally and utterly worthless and I think, where possible, we need to identify the actual fishing boats on those labels,” Leftwich said.
He also attacked the supermarkets for destroying seasonality. “We have to stand up to these [supermarket] people...the things we do in the EU - I think we need shooting for [them]…when we start catching all these fish when they are full of roe in the winter time. Would you go and shoot all your cows in a field when they have just had a calf?” he asked.
He said generally developing countries were obvious targets of conglomerates to source mass volume, cheap product which was then used to generate large profits. He had grave doubts about consistent enforcement on traders manipulating product around the world’s ports. Punishments had to be “punitive” to stop this. He cited a case from some years ago of a trader he took to court who was making £50,000 per 20-tonne container of fraudulent fish. The fine was only £5,000 on traffic worth £500,000. The rich countries had to give developing states the resources to tackle the problem: “What we really have to be careful of is that we don’t just push our problems somewhere else around the world and the illegal trade just goes somewhere else,” he concluded.
Fishermen’s voices
Barrie Deas, CEO of the UK National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations spoke after Jean-Pierre Vergine, Principal Administrator of the EU’s DG Fisheries had spelt out draft EU plans on IUU.
Calm and forthright, Deas said the phrase that he had heard used of the draft was: "This is unworkable". The EU proposal to ban transhipping ignored necessary and legitimate operations so “Is it rational, is it proportionate to apply a blanket prohibition?” he asked. The history of the CFP was of “measures introduced in good faith which have not delivered and were not an effective management model”. The idea of policing every fish or fillet was not “practicable and not enforceable”. Another option explored in the EU regulatory impact assessment, was more attractive, he said, in that it was risk-based and targeted systems through intelligence work. Tailored, regional measures seemed wiser rather than a blanket, uniform system which had so far resulted in failure. “Our fears are that, in the eagerness to address the vitally important issue of IUU, a further burden is placed on the legitimate trade in fish without substantially addressing the illegal trade.” Short-term politics were overriding the need for a workable, practical system. This was an “important initiative undermined by a flawed implementation”, he said.
This was reinforced by James West from Peterhead (owner of the "Fruitful Bough" in the Trawlermen TV series). Speaking without a text, he riveted the audience, recounting the meaning of work of at sea for his family and how so many communities had suffered from bad government stock management and the grinding impact of regulation. He drew an analogy between short-term political conservation tactics and quotas for cod and other stocks, and the invasion of Iraq. Both had often been based on wrong data, wrong decisions, had no appropriate forethought and produced devastating and costly consequences for everyone and everything they touched.
Nail and jail
Richard Ball of South Africa’s Pioneer Fishing Co., accused poachers of corrupting southern ocean fishing fleets crews. New alliances had to hunt down the pirates and the detail of his colourful approach will be in the official report*. “Attack their wallets, go for their assets and try to increase their costs – they pay no tax, they pay low wages…we’ve got to nail them, we’ve got to jail them. What we need is to hang someone in the morning! Follow the money – make it impossible for them to operate,” he said. “We know who they are, we have the names, we have the addresses…” he added.
Gunnar Album and Maren Esmark of Norway’s Friends of the Earth showed how they were collecting such evidence through painstaking detective work, tracking cod and haddock landings from Arctic ports and transit countries to processing factories such as in China. They displayed health impex certificates and paraded company names in a chain of northern Arctic operations. The allegation is these companies-behind-companies (it is all done by mirrors) are taking Barents Sea and third country product for processing in China then re-sale around the world. However, while the fish may be processed in China, is it northern European money which has controlling stakes in the Chinese processing factories? Are the catching and transporting vessels really 'Russian', or owned and funded by someone else? Watch this quay!
* www.illegal-fishing.info/ 4th IUU Fishing Update and Stakeholder Consultation, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 31 March – 1 April 2008, supported by the UK Department for International Development
