Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Hidden costs of seafood: Why "Sustainable" Tuna Is Being Paid for by Taxpayers

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Hidden costs of seafood: Why "Sustainable" Tuna Is Being Paid for by Taxpayers · How To Protect The Ocean

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What if the multi-billion dollar tuna industry you thought was thriving is
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actually being kept alive by government support, which means public taxpayer
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money, and with the health of the ocean and the workers often paying the price.
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Today we're unpacking how Europe's tuna fleets mask losses with
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subsidies and why that matters to sustainability and what it means for
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the future of global tuna fishing.
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We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How
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to Protect the ocean Podcast.
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Let's start the show.
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Hey everybody.
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Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the ocean Podcast.
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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, marine scientist and science communicator
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here to tell you what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for
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the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.
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On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about how governments are propping up
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the tuna fishing industry by paying for subsidies to its operators, to the actual
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fishers, not to the whole area of tuna fishing, the processors, the plants,
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the seafood markets, and all that kind of stuff that provides a lot of jobs.
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This is a complex issue, but we're gonna be focusing on the actual fishers, the
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people that go out and fish for tuna and what subsidies they're getting
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and why it's so important they get those subsidies and what it's doing.
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If they didn't have those subsidies, what it would do to the
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tuna fleet in Spain and France.
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That's what we're gonna be focusing on today.
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There was a new paper that just came out talking about this very same
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subject, And so I looked at the paper.
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I wanted to talk about it ' cause I think it's really important.
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So we're gonna get into it.
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But before we do, I just want to let you know I've reopened up and
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kind of redesigned my Patreon.
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The idea around it is to support what I'm doing.
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I am trying to build a network of podcasts on wildlife specifically the oceans.
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And I'm doing this because not a lot of people do that.
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Organizations try to put out podcasts.
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And they come in.
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They often fizzle out, not their fault.
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It's a lot of work.
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I'm trying to build this out independently so I'm not just part of
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one organization, but I can provide a voice for many organizations and many
1:58
people within the field of wildlife biology, ocean biology, ocean science,
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marine biology, ocean conservation, whatever you'd like to call it.
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And so it's really important for me to do this.
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It's a passion in my life and I don't always get support from organizations
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or grants and things like that.
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I'm a for-profit company.
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Your help as I was crowdfunding some of these and just supporting the
2:18
cost of putting out the websites and the cost of my time and my equipment
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and everything like that, that I put together really is helpful and
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also to make a living out of it.
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So if you enjoy what you've been hearing over the last week, if this is
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your first week or the first episode, or you've been with me for the last
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10 years, I would love your support.
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If you wanna support me, go to speak up for blue.com/patreon.
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But let's get back into what you're here to listen to and that is independent
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podcasts on ocean conservation, talking about tuna fleets, which
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we're gonna be talking about, and the subsidies that they get because
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subsidies don't get talked about often.
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Let's be honest here.
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It's boring to talk about.
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It's not the sexy part.
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You want to hear like, are the tuna fish going down in stock?
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Is it a sustainable thing?
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Is it not?
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Look, there are many people working within this industry to say, whether
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the stocks are doing well or not.
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A lot of tuna fish stocks are not doing the best.
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There's a big fishery around it.
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There are a lot of people, a lot of organizations who are working to make it
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better and those are working really well.
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But there's still a lot of work that we have to do.
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But the thing is, is tuna as an industry is a big billion dollar industry.
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And so to make sure that that billion in dollar industry is put together,
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subsidies have to be used in certain aspects to prop up that activity.
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And in this case, we're talking about tuna fishing.
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The fishing needs to be propped up in certain countries.
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So today we're gonna be talking about French and Spanish companies
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that are looking at the focuses on the EU purse seine fleets.
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And so that's what we're gonna be focusing on today.
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'cause research has analyzed more than a decade of data of
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company-level financial data.
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So this is not stock assessments or anything like that.
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We're looking at levels of fish.
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We're looking at company-level financial data with the focus
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of EU purse seine fleets mainly French and Spanish companies.
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Okay?
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So this is not the entire fleet by any means, but this is what we're getting a
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subsection of that, which is really great.
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So They separate the actual operating performance from public
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financial support, which is the subsidies that we're talking about.
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So this is not just ideology.
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This is not just what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing.
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This is actually accounting.
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We're getting into the forensics accounting of this fleet, okay?
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And I think it's really important that we do it.
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So here, let's just go right into it.
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The core findings really is the profits disappear once without the subsidies.
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So essentially the subsidies are for fuel tax exemptions, which
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are among the largest subsidies.
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And then of course, the EU funds and pay fishing access fees to coastal
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habitats to different countries.
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So whatever countries they go around to, they get that.
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If we remove the support for those two items, most fleets operate under a loss.
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So the fishing boats and the fleets operate under a loss.
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In some years, subsidies exceed reported profits.
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Fishing is a very difficult industry to get into.
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It really works off of what's happening in the ocean.
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We know that there's a lot of disturbances in the ocean from a lot of different ways.
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Climate change, overfishing, plastic pollution, bad water quality, but
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also we just have fluctuations in population sizes, just in general.
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And all of those are from a cumulative impact.
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All of those disturbance I just mentioned will have an effect on that,
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but also just natural variability will have an effect on that.
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Sometimes tuna fish are doing well in population, sometimes they're
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not doing so well in population.
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That could be due to a number of different issues.
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Right.
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And so it's not necessarily that the people that are doing
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it are doing the wrong thing.
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It's just the fact that they continue to fish and there's variability.
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And there's also a lot of disturbances and there are some bad players in this
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industry as in any industry, That's not the majority that are bad, but they
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have a living to do and they have to go out and they have to fish these fish.
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So the question really becomes obvious here, if these fleets lose
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money without the subsidies, why do governments keep paying them?
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Why are they losing money if they don't get subsidy?
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So here it's, so they wanna prevent economic collapse.
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So without these subsidies, fleets would shrink or disappear.
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Vessel decommissioning, port closures and bankruptcies would also follow.
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So the subsidies act as a life support.
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Governments are not just rewarding success, they are preventing
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the collapse of this fleet.
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And then of course there are jobs in political stability
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when it really comes down to it.
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So tuna fleet support jobs beyond fishing.
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So processing, shipping, ports, logistics.
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It's a lot of different jobs that are out there.
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So obviously, you know when you have job losses and it's concentrated one
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specific fleet, that's not really great especially politically sensitive
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areas or coastal regions, right?
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When you have like ports closed down, logistics closed down,
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shipping, processing, the fleet itself, a lot of people will get
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pretty angry when that went down.
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If you don't realize that or if you didn't know about the cod industry
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in Canada, on the east coast, when that cod fishery just basically
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bottomed out and it got closed, people were rioting in the government
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buildings back in the early nineties.
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It was a crazy scene because they lost their livelihoods and it
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could have been prevented by the government, but they didn't prevent it.
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It could have been prevented by a lot of people that didn't prevent,
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and those people paid with some scary things that are happening.
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So paying subsidies is often cheaper politically than
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dealing with the unemployment.
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That's really what it comes down to in some cases.
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It's like political parties that are in power.
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They would like to stay in power.
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They would like people to have jobs.
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So if they have to pay a little bit of money to get more people to stay
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in jobs, that's great, but who pays
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for the consequences around these subsidies that are paying for
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people to have these jobs, right?
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That's what we're really kind of coming down to.
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Is it worth it?
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And that is for each country to answer, I guess, is really what it comes down to.
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And it depends on where you fall in protecting the environment
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or protecting people's jobs or just, protecting political power.
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Like it really just depends.
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Because sometimes, the people in power are looking out for a lot
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of different things, not just the environment, a lot of times, not the
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environment, but looking out for a lot of things like human rights and sort of
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international relations and so forth.
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So it could be a very complicated and web-like system that you're like, Hey,
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I don't like what you're doing over here with like, subsidizing the tuna fleet.
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But I really like you for standing up for democracy or whatever you're
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doing and standing up for this.
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And so it becomes difficult when you're looking at the overall picture.
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But when it comes to this, the subsidy is really preventing just
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the collapse of the industry.
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So let's talk about not only just the countries itself, but just the
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influence of the tuna industry and the geopolitics and how this tuna
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fleet brings it all together.
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So the EU fleets fish in foreign waters through access agreements.
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So, like I said before, you know, the EU will pay those countries to
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get access, but then the EU fishing fleets will go in there and fish.
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That's the benefit of being part of the EU.
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The EU has all these relationships with different countries and you
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can go in there and you can fish.
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These agreements are essentially part of a broader diplomatic and
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economic relationships managed by the EU, the European Union.
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That's what this really comes down to, as I mentioned.
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So fishing is not just about fish anymore.
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It's about influence, presence, and leverage within those countries.
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And I think that is, again, talking to the complexities of how these
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things kind of get lost in the moment or in the whole web-like structure of
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government relations, and I think it's really difficult to kind of get out of.
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Subsidies lower costs for the market, right?
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For the fleets, especially in fuel.
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This allows EU fleets to go further and to compete with
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other lower cost global fleets.
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The distant fleet for China is probably the biggest fishing fleet around.
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They go all over the world and it's cheaper to let them go all over the
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world for China and like go and fish and they come back with all these
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fish and Asian markets, European markets, and every and other others.
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But it's a lower cost fishery.
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Right, because they don't have maybe the same regulations or costs that
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are associated with their fleet.
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So subsidies protect position, not necessarily the performance and
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the sustainability of the fishery.
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Now, of course, subsidies have existed for decades.
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We know this in a lot of different industries, oil and gas industry,
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and the fishing industry.
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Removing them creates immediate pain
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and also delayed benefits.
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So it's like when you put in a marine protected area.
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Putting in the marine protected area immediately takes away that
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area from being fished, if that's what you're trying to protect.
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And so a lot of the fishing community is like, well, I don't want to do that 'cause
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that gives me no access for at least three or four years until this fishery rebuilds
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within this marine protected area.
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And we start to see a spillover effect outside of the boundaries
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so that they can fish again.
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But they don't want to do that because it's not as if
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they're making the big bucks.
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These are a lot of times they're artisanal fishers.
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It's not industrial fishing.
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So they're just like, why am I gonna do that?
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But then they see the benefits later on and they're like, oh, I'm glad we had the
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short-term pain for the long-term gain.
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But it's very difficult to convince fishers and anybody to go through
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that short term pain when you in itself are not going through
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that pain, but the people are.
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And so the government has a very difficult problem at hand
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to convince people to do that.
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So it's easier for governments to just keep paying subsidies
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than to redesign the system.
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Know what government wants to be the government to know, like they've
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taken away something from people and caused people pain because
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that means they won't get back in.
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I would love for governments to start just doing like, Hey, this is for the best
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of you guys, and even if we're gonna do it, even if it costs us power later on.
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You'll never see a government do that.
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I would be very surprised if we see a government do it.
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In fact, I would vote more for a government who did that because
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they understand that politics is not just about staying in power.
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Politics is about the people and what's best for the people.
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And if that is part of like your short term pain, if you're the
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short term pain part, well then that's your, the short term pain.
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But you did a good thing to set them up for better later on, right?
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So I think that is something to keep an eye out for.
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But you won't see many political parties do that.
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So like why is all this, well, I'm talking about all this, but why
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does it matter for sustainability?
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That's really the question when it comes down here.
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The subsidies enable longer trips and higher fishing effort.
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So they can go out for longer.
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They can look around more for these tuna to make sure that they catch them
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and they can catch as many as they can.
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This contributes to, of course, the excess capacity.
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So the fact that they can go out further, they can go out longer, they can fish
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more cause they don't have to pay as much in fuel, that allows 'em to bring more
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back, but doesn't necessarily allow them to get outta the grips or the tuna to
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get outta the grips from these fishers.
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They're able to fish longer.
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Economic pressure encourages cost cutting elsewhere, including labor conditions.
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So not only are they going out for longer, but people are away
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from their families for longer.
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People are away from land for longer.
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So they can go out for a couple years or they can go for a year.
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Some boats will go out for years.
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And then the working conditions become worse because think about it.
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When you're out on a fishing boat, you're out on a boat for, like if you say you
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go out for two weeks or even a month or even two months, or even six months,
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you're out for that boat for six months.
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You're not seeing your family.
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You're not on back on land.
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You're working probably seven days a week.
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12 hours a days, I'm sure in some cases, maybe even more.
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And so you don't get that break, you don't get holidays.
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You don't get access to your family after your nine to five,
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like this is serious business.
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And if you're out for longer than a month or two, the working
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conditions get really worse.
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People make mistakes.
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It can get dangerous, and some people just don't even care.
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That's where you start to get into a lot of labor laws being
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broken in international waters or even in national waters.
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That could be a problem.
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A fleet that should scale down, it never does.
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But it should scale down, not only for the fish, but also for the people.
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So artificial profitability delays hard, but necessary changes.
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That's a big thing with this paper that's come out.
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This creates tension when you're looking at subsidies when
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it comes to sustainability
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messaging.
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So many sustainability frameworks focus on stock health and compliance.
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So there are a number of different organizations that are really
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looking at science-based management.
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They're looking at best practices.
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How can we fish better, lower the bycatch, catch, you know, tuna fish, but not
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too much and still make it sustainable.
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We're looking at very much the science aspect, the life science
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aspect of it, not necessarily the economic science aspect of it.
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So this paper shows that stock health does not necessarily equal to
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a healthy economic model because that the economic model is propped up by
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a subsidy that if it wasn't there, it would like pretty much bottom
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out the fishery in specific aspects.
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So a fishery can follow the rules and still be fundamentally broken.
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So it can still look at sustainability and compliance, but it could still
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prop up something that probably isn't that gonna be that sustainable
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and is kind of contributing to the unsustainable part of that.
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So when we look at the risk of the fishery, the public
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money is absorbing the risk.
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The subsidy is absorbing the risk to prop up this fleet and saying, Hey, this is
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actually profitable, but is it profitable?
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Maybe not for certain aspects of it, but maybe the latter half of it.
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The selling of tuna 'cause selling tuna is pretty profitable.
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So private companies still retain access and market share, which is great for
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them, but the public has to pay for that.
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And environmental and social costs remain externalized.
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So the fact is, is like when we look at public subsidies, so taxpayer money is
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propping up an industry that would not be there if there was no subsidy for it.
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The political parties that are doing this, the governments that are doing
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this are doing this because they don't wanna look bad and they don't
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want the whole system to shut down.
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And so if the system shuts down, they probably won't get voted back in.
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'cause a lot of people feel bad for people losing their jobs and they, although a lot
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of people don't want to pay for subsidies to protect the environment, or that is
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not protecting the environment, a lot of people still want people to have jobs.
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If that's a small payment for that, which will be better.
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But obviously the political parties that are in power, they benefit from this.
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The environmental social costs still remain externalized obviously, and the
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system looks stable only because taxpayers and ecosystems pay the hidden cost.
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That's the only reason.
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That's what happens is these taxpayers and ecosystems are paying the cost.
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So the authors argue there's need for change of this paper.
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So first they want to phase out harmful subsidies.
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So the subsidies that pay for fuel exemptions, that's especially the
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ones that they wanna look after.
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Increase the transparency around fleet economics.
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So make sure that people know about this.
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Align labor standards with sustainability goals.
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So making sure that people are being treated properly and the
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fish are being treated properly, like they're not being overfished.
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That's really big.
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And of course, design policies that reward resilience, not dependence.
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So design the fishers that actually change so that they
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don't have to rely on subsidies.
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They actually change, and they find a way to pay for the fuel themselves.
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Pay for the access themselves.
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So sustainability must include economics and ecosystems together.
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That's a huge, huge thing.
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And that's really the point of this episode is to make sure that
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sustainability includes economics, people, and ecosystems altogether.
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That's gonna be a big part moving forward.
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I'd love to hear what you think about what's gonna happen to this fishery.
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Do you think that these subsidies should be removed or a change should
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happen or phased out at some point?
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'cause I think if you just remove it, you're gonna get immediate
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pain and you're gonna see a lot of people pissed off, essentially.
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Obviously we don't wanna see anybody losing their jobs, but it's an interesting
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conundrum that they're in, phasing out these harmful subsidies, especially the
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fuel exemptions is really important.
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Looking at the transparency, of course around fleet economics
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and of course, aligning standards and sustainability goals.
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I'd love to hear your thoughts on all this.
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Let me know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube.
16:30
If you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, you can go to
16:32
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.
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Of course, you can look at me up on Instagram at How to Protect the ocean.
16:43
Of course, anywhere else on TikTok.
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I'm Speak up for Blue.
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There's gonna be a bunch of links in the show notes.
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Love to hear from you 'cause that's what this is.
16:50
This is opening up a conversation so that we can continue it and
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talk about more about fisheries.
16:55
The next episode's gonna have fisheries.
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We're gonna be talking about international fisheries, the High
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Seas Treaty, and Squid Fisheries.
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We're gonna talk about that on the next episode of the How
17:04
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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But for now, thank you for joining me.
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This has been another exciting episode of the How to Protect the ocean Podcast.
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I'm your host Andrew Lewin from the true nor strong and free.
17:13
Have a great day.
17:13
We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.