Fish crimes in the global oceans

Abstract

This study provides a global assessment of the linkages between observed fisheries-related offenses across the world’s oceans between 2000 and 2020. We analyze data from the largest existing repository with 6853 events reporting offenses across 18 fishing-related categories, including illegal fishing, human rights abuses, and smuggling. We find that at least 33% of all recorded offenses are associated with 450 industrial vessels and 20 companies originating from China, the EU, and tax haven jurisdictions. We observe links between various types of offenses for 779 vessels, with such “transversal criminality” involving 2000 offenses and crimes globally. This study demonstrates the ability to identify offenders and patterns of behaviors threatening fisheries sustainability at a global level and countries most vulnerable to transversal criminality. In light of concerns for widespread underreporting and impunity, we call for greater information sharing, interagency cooperation, and stringent enforcement to bring to account major offenders.

Adjacency and vessel domestication as enablers of fish crimes

“…This major contribution to livelihoods and food security is threatened by unsustainable and often illegal fishing (Doumbouya et al, 2017;Merem et al, 2019;, which itself is often tied to other types of criminal activities (UNODC, 2011;Belhabib and Le Billon, 2022). Illegal fishing in West Africa results in a loss to coastal states of US$2.3 billion annually, benefiting more developed nations and their DWF fleets (Doumbouya et al, 2017).…”

“…In order to analyze possible links between adjacency and illegal fishing, we compared the official lists of registered and licensed fishing vessels (including "domesticated" or "reflagged" with the host jurisdiction) 6 obtained from the governments for the study sample (Table 1) to the data extracted from the Criminal Record of Fishing Vessels (CRFV © Belhabib, 2018) for the region. The CRFV compiles information on vessels and fishing company infractions from media reports, government reports, automatic identification system (AIS) track analysis, and testimonies from witnesses and informants (Belhabib and Le Billon, 2022). Data are gathered on a daily basis since 2016, whenever these reports are made available.…”

“…7 CRFV includes information on 7,011 events, each event being usually associated with a specific vessel or a company, and over 1,500 companies during the period 2000-2020 and covers eight languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Indonesian, and Portuguese), thus reducing the spotlight effect created by the "English search bias". While extensive, the CRFV only provides a partial record of offenses and our findings are thus inherently limited to a non-comprehensive and possibly biased assessment of illegal activities, with a possible bias in the number of recorded offenses resulting for example from the level of MCS (Ganapathiraju, 2022), as well as the ratio of identified offenses that are publicly reported or otherwise identified and included in the CRFV (Belhabib and Le Billon, 2022). 8 With this caveat in mind, we consider the main categories of offenses for the DWF industrial sector (see Table 1).…”

“…For this, we distinguish between five main types of adjacency characterizing national (or truly domestic) vessels, domesticated fishing vessels, "neighbor domestic" vessels, "neighbor domesticated" vessels, and foreign flagged vessels with local fishing agreements (see below). Empirically, we focus on how adjacency manifests itself in terms of vessel registration (i.e., "Flag"), fishing license, ownership, and recorded fishing offenses in the context of seven countries in West Africa, one of the most targeted fishing areas in the world by DWF fleets, including industrial illegal fishing fleets (Belhabib and Le Billon, 2022).…”

An overview of seabirds in the Santos Basin, Brazil: species, threats, and current trends in studies

“…An increasing number of studies have reported problems related to climate change, the exploitation of natural resources, and the release of pollutants into the ocean (e.g. Doney et al, 2012;Kühn et al, 2020;Hatje et al, 2021;Belhabib and Le Billon, 2022;Nunes et al, 2022), reinforcing the importance of detecting and monitoring their potential effects on marine ecosystems.…”