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How Do We Stop Over Fishing? Fishing Transparency is a Good Start · How To Protect The Ocean

0:00
The absence of transparency measures leads to things like
0:04
IUU fishing, fisheries mismanagement. fraud
0:08
and corruption in fisheries decision making and
0:14
Overfishing is a major problem all over the world
0:18
in the ocean. It doesn't matter if it's near a coastline. It doesn't
0:21
matter if it's in the high seas. Every country struggles
0:26
with ensuring that fisheries species like
0:29
the species that are fished are actually managed properly.
0:33
A lot of the countries that we are operating in or
0:36
partnering with have specific roles attached
0:40
to specific species. What we would really like
0:44
to see is a much, pardon the pun, but a much broader
0:47
net cast. where more of these species are
0:51
falling under these import control schemes and things like that so
0:57
There's some species that have sustainable fisheries and there
1:01
are some that just don't. And it's very difficult to control because
1:05
there are a lot of players at play. You have the government, you
1:08
have the industry, and then you have the scientists and
1:12
conservationists that try and feed information into
1:16
both processes, government and industry, to be able
1:19
to get the right number of, say, to set a quota or
1:23
to make sure that management is put forth. Now, with
1:27
that complexity, you put in political will and
1:31
you put in voters and campaign contributors and you get
1:34
a lot more complex in how things roll
1:38
out. And it can be really sticky situations.
1:43
What adds to that complexity is the fact that we don't have a
1:46
lot of information about most of the fisheries that
1:49
happen around the world. That means a specific species
1:53
that is fished may not have the amount of information that
1:57
we need as scientists and conservationists to be able to
2:00
set quota for government to manage properly as well as
2:06
We saw the same thing in maritime security, where within
2:10
a single country, you might not have the Coast Guard talking
2:13
to the Ministry of Fisheries. And that's a challenge. But
2:16
it's also just not something that they've ever been faced with before. They
2:22
And there are some, like I said, there are some bad players and there are some good players. And
2:25
the bad players are greedy and they just want as much money as possible. The
2:28
good players want to be able to fish forever and be able to
2:32
pass it on to generations to come. So how do
2:36
we manage data that we don't have a lot of? The
2:40
big thing is transparency. Being able to
2:43
find out how we can get as much data as possible and sharing
2:47
that data and sharing how the data came to be and
2:50
the methods to get that data, the methods of phishing with
2:54
other players around the world. In comes the
2:58
Coalition of Fisheries Transparency. It's a
3:01
global network of civil society organizations working to
3:04
advance fisheries transparency measures to ensure the sustainability and
3:08
equitability of the fisheries sector. And today
3:12
I have the director of that coalition, Maisie Pidgeon
3:15
who is here to talk about the work that
3:19
the coalition has done in the two years since its inception and the
3:22
work that it plans to do in the future and hopes to do and gives us a lot
3:25
of information on the complexity as well as some
3:29
of the strides that have been made by a variety of different countries. So we're going
3:32
to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's
3:35
start the show. Hey
3:40
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
3:44
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
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4:58
So, this is a topic that I've been wanting to talk about for a
5:01
long time. And Maisie's team reached out to me and said,
5:05
hey, do you want to talk about fisheries transparency? And
5:08
I said, absolutely I do. And you're probably wondering why does
5:12
this matter? And why don't we have this information before?
5:16
Like why do we not have enough information? If you remember a couple
5:19
of years ago or a year ago, I had on someone
5:23
from Oceania, Canada. We talked about sort of the state of
5:27
stock assessments and fisheries in Canada. And
5:30
the big thing there, the big conclusion was we don't have a lot of information on
5:34
most of the fisheries that are available. And they're going to be putting
5:38
out another, if they've not already put it out already, they're going to be putting out another
5:41
stock assessment sort of evaluation. And
5:45
we're going to find out probably the same thing, that we do not have enough information
5:49
on enough of the fishery stocks that are being fished around the world, around Canada.
5:53
Imagine what that is around the world. There are a lot of different countries.
5:56
They all have their own practices and their own rules and their own set of regulations. Not
6:00
all of them are equal. Some of them are a little bit behind. Some of them
6:04
are really advanced. It's not all there and
6:07
that's really hindering better management of
6:11
fisheries by not knowing what we have to manage. Not
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having that information can lead towards the extinction or
6:22
the collapse of a fishery of a specific species. And
6:25
so we're gonna talk a lot about how important transparency is,
6:30
how the coalition started, why it started, and what the purpose is
6:33
in this interview with Maisie Pidgeon. Enjoy, and I will talk to
6:37
you after. Hey Maisie, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean
6:40
podcast. Are you ready to talk about transparency and
6:44
fisheries? Absolutely, let's do it. All right. This
6:48
is a topic that I've been wanting to have on the podcast for
6:51
a long time. And when you contacted me and your staff contacted
6:55
me to be like, hey, Andrew, would you like to talk about this on your podcast? I'm like, absolutely, yes.
6:58
I'm going to respond, respond, respond as quickly as possible. Because I
7:02
find when we get into just the topic of overfishing and
7:06
fisheries in general, it can feel disconnected
7:10
from anybody who's listening to this podcast, even myself. Sometimes I'm
7:13
just like, do I have any control over this? Do I have enough information
7:16
on this? How can I do better either as an individual or
7:20
as like a volunteer for an organization such as Oceana or anything like
7:24
that? How can I support this type of work in
7:27
any way possible? And so it's great to have yourself on
7:31
to be able to explain this to us. Now, we're gonna get your title
7:34
in just a second, but we're gonna get involved into like, you know, illegal,
7:38
unreported, and I keep forgetting the last one, and what's
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the last one? Unregulated. Unregulated, shoot. And unregulated fisheries.
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We've talked about it in the past before. We're going to really get down into it. How do we
7:49
combat it? How do we address it with other countries and
7:53
so forth? So we're going to get into all of that. But before we do, Maisie, why
7:59
Sure. My name is Maisie Pidgeon. I'm the director of
8:05
Nice. Very, very nice. Now, how does
8:09
one become the director of sort
8:13
of like a coalition like this? Because, you know,
8:16
this is, why don't you just let us know a little bit more about
8:19
the coalition first, and then we'll kind of talk a little bit about your background and how you
8:23
Yeah, absolutely. So the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency
8:27
is a network of 50 civil society member organizations. and
8:32
we have members across Africa, Asia, Europe,
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Latin America, North America, Oceania, and
8:39
all of those organizations are working to improve fisheries
8:43
governance and sustainability through advancing fisheries transparency
8:47
policies. The framework around which we work
8:50
is something called the Global Charter, which I'm sure we'll speak about later, but it's
8:54
a set of 10 policy principles around fisheries
8:57
transparency, the best practices in fisheries transparency in
9:01
the areas of vessel information, fishing activity,
9:06
Gotcha. Okay, look, now this makes me want to get into it even more.
9:10
Before we do, I just want to get a little background on you, Maisie. So how does
9:14
one become a director? Like, where did it all start? Where did your love for
9:20
So I have been in this position for just over two years.
9:25
And prior to that, I spent about
9:28
a decade and a half working in maritime security. So
9:32
I originally started working in counter-piracy. And
9:36
that evolved into all other kinds of
9:39
maritime crime, including illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing,
9:44
as well as wildlife trafficking by
9:48
maritime modes and things like that. So I've worked
9:51
for NGOs. I have been a consultant for the U.N. and
9:58
Gotcha. OK, so this is interesting. You know, it's funny when you said counter
10:01
piracy right at the beginning, you know, I think people think piracy now of
10:05
videos and and other things. But now we're talking about like
10:08
actual pirates, actual piracy on the water.
10:12
Like, I think the closest we could probably really
10:16
relate to is sort of the pirates in Somalia
10:20
that, you know, were attacking supply boats. And there was a
10:23
famous movie starring Tom Hanks, who, you know, really
10:27
sort of displayed sort of what would happen
10:30
and how dangerous it could be. What it like what, like,
10:34
how prevalent is piracy still today,
10:41
Well, when I started working on it, that was really sort of the height of
10:44
the Somali piracy crisis that you're talking about, in
10:48
which case we were seeing anywhere from 50 to
10:51
100 attacks every single year off the coast of Somalia. And
10:56
increasingly, we saw lots off the coast of West Africa and
11:00
in the Sulu and Celebes seas as well,
11:04
and eventually even into Latin America. Thankfully,
11:09
at this point in history, we have decreased
11:13
the annual piracy attack numbers.
11:18
And I think a lot of that is due to international cooperation, which
11:21
is sort of brings us back to where we are now talking
11:25
about IUU phishing and some of the tools we might have in
11:30
Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about that. The IEU fishing. I kind
11:34
of defined it very poorly at the beginning of this episode. Can
11:38
you just talk about what it is and the
11:43
problems that it's causing in fisheries today and
11:50
I'll actually start by talking a little bit more about transparency and
11:53
what the lack of transparency can do, can enable, I
11:57
should say, if that's all right. But the
12:00
absence of transparency measures leads to things like
12:04
IUU fishing, fisheries mismanagement, fraud
12:08
and corruption in fisheries decision-making, and
12:12
even human rights abuses in the fisheries sector is unfortunately
12:16
something that we see as well. The downriver effects of
12:19
this kind of fisheries mismanagement, which is sort of the broad
12:23
umbrella that IUU would fall under, I
12:26
would say, includes overexploited fishery stocks, food
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insecurity is a major concern, and
12:34
risks to the livelihoods of residents of these coastal communities
12:38
in places like West Africa or Pacific Island
12:41
nations, for instance. Meanwhile, we
12:45
would say transparency is the tool at our
12:48
disposal to combat these kinds of challenges. These
12:52
measures are, generally speaking, low cost and easily
12:56
implemented. And I think the
13:00
really critical thing, which is something I bring from my past in maritime security,
13:04
is that more and better information enables informed
13:08
and inclusive decision making, which brings everybody to
13:12
a seat at the table. From the government perspective, too, it lends
13:16
credibility. It demonstrates the government's trustworthiness to citizens
13:19
because they're sharing information and they're including them in the process. So
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to us, transparency measures are really a win-win for
13:29
For sure. Now, if it has so many benefits,
13:34
Why are we talking about it now? Why isn't it just something that
13:38
we have in every government where there's transparency? Where
13:41
is the incentive to not be transparent for when
13:45
it comes to fisheries, where it comes to
13:52
I think there's a couple of different ways
13:55
that you could frame this. I think the fishery
13:59
sector is one in which there are some corrupt actors
14:03
working. Um, where a small number of people are
14:06
becoming enriched by overselling fishing licenses or
14:10
something like that. Um, so that's one part of the problem. The
14:13
other part of the problem though, and I think probably the more commonplace
14:17
one is there's just a lack of understanding of
14:21
what fisheries transparency can do. Um, these infrastructures are
14:24
not necessarily in place, uh, in places. Um,
14:29
and there are a lot of competing voices telling these governments
14:32
that there The fishing industry
14:36
doesn't want additional measures to
14:39
abide by. So it can be a kind of complicated set
14:47
I feel like international fisheries in general, even
14:51
whether you're looking at a national scale, It feels like it's
14:55
complex, right? Like this is not an easy problem to solve. I
14:58
mean, if it was, it probably would have been solved a long time ago.
15:02
So you've mentioned some of the complexities and some
15:05
of the problems from a human rights point of view, obviously, in
15:09
terms of what we call fishery slavery and other
15:13
acts that have occurred through a lot of these
15:16
bad players and so forth. You know,
15:20
I feel like with overfishing, that kind of
15:23
is one of the major problems with the ocean. It feels as though a
15:26
lot of, it feels almost like there's a blanket, and some movies
15:30
have highlighted this, where there's this like blanket of negative view
15:33
of any kind of fishing. in any kind of fisheries, to
15:37
the point where people are like, the only way we can really get over overfishing is
15:40
if everybody stops eating fish. You and I know that will never happen.
15:44
There's too many people that depend on the protein stores worldwide that will
15:47
happen. And even people who don't necessarily need to depend on
15:50
it will still want to have fish. So we know that's not low.
15:54
But we also know that it's not all fishing is
15:58
bad. So I guess where I really wanted
16:01
to go with this was, When we talk about fishery and
16:04
transparencies, there are some
16:08
fisheries where there's large
16:13
and then there's small fisheries, right? And when
16:16
we talk about transparency, it's like where do we begin in terms of
16:23
Oh, yeah. Okay. I hear you. Um, so I think some of the positive examples,
16:28
uh, here are generally sort of fishery by fishery. And
16:32
just in case your listeners are not necessarily
16:36
fisheries biologists, which I am also not for the record. Um,
16:40
when I refer to a fishery, I mean, a specific species of
16:44
fish. So maybe that's squid or maybe that's yellowfin tuna.
16:48
Um, so a lot of the countries that we are operating in
16:52
or partnering with. have specific rules
16:56
attached to specific species. What
16:59
we would really like to see is a much, pardon the pun, but
17:03
a much broader net cast where more of these species
17:06
are falling under these import control schemes and things like
17:10
that so that we have better data on all of the species that
17:14
Got you. So everybody is part of the information that comes in.
17:18
So for instance, I know in Canada, we've talked to
17:21
Oceana Canada before they've come in and they've done their annual report on
17:25
where the fisheries stock assessments are and where our fisheries management
17:29
is. And a lot of the times there's lack of data for a number of
17:32
species. So it's really difficult to gain an
17:36
understanding of where they're at, whether they're critically endangered in
17:40
danger or they're doing really well we we have no idea because there's there's
17:43
a lot of lack there's a lack of information of those species. And
17:47
a lot of the times as we know from just ocean
17:50
biology and how it's changed over the last number of decades is that. We've
17:54
seen a change in like going from looking at more of a habitat style, like
17:58
looking at like an ecosystem management, base management scheme, rather
18:01
than a species by species basis. Because you never know if you're fishing yellowfin
18:05
tuna, you're going to affect other species. That's right. Long lining or
18:09
what have you, right? And gillnets can also affect
18:12
other species. There's a lot of gear that comes down to it. Absolutely. Yeah,
18:18
I should also say that a lot of countries, for
18:22
instance, we're working in East Asia with Japan and
18:25
Korea, and they have started their import control
18:29
schemes by looking at high-risk species. And
18:32
this is, of course, a really logical starting point. From
18:36
the perspective of the coalition, any progress is good progress.
18:40
And we understand that countries are not operating from
18:44
the same starting point. So, like, regardless
18:51
Yeah, for sure. Obviously, yeah, that's
18:55
an important point to stay home is not
18:58
every country has made it a priority in the past, even though they might
19:01
be a coastal country and depend on its fisheries. It
19:06
took a while before the US and Canada probably tracked cod.
19:10
Yeah, right. So we were probably on the downfall a lot
19:13
before than we knew when it comes down to that for
19:16
Atlantic cod. It's really interesting
19:21
when you talk about this coalition, you talk about working with different countries.
19:25
When it first started, how many countries were involved?
19:30
Did the coalition have
19:35
as many organizations a part of it? I think you mentioned about 50 organizations.
19:40
Did it have as many when it first started or have you been bringing people on
19:46
bringing people in as we've gone along. And part of that is organic,
19:50
as you might imagine. But a lot of that has been that my
19:53
team and I have been working with our other partners, whether that's
19:57
Oceana or EJF or some of these other
20:00
civil society organizations who are really plugged in on
20:04
the ground to understand who they're working with and
20:07
where these major fishing countries are, whether they're seafood exporting
20:12
countries, seafood importing countries, fishing nations, And
20:16
finding potential partners in civil
20:20
society on the ground in those places too. Sorry,
20:25
I was just going to say we really are seeking out places where
20:28
we think civil society has an opportunity to
20:32
make an impact and change policy. So that's
20:35
sort of the criteria for the places where we're actively recruiting members
20:39
and seeking to organize them and align their strategies and
20:43
Makes total sense. If you think about it, if you think about looking at tackling
20:47
transparency for fisheries, that's a huge undertaking for
20:51
like a small team. You need the team that's on the ground that understands the
20:55
local fishery, which helps and the local people who are involved
20:58
in the fishery. and get that feedback mechanism. That's still
21:02
a tall order to take on. How
21:06
is the organization, like how's the sort of the coalition
21:10
sort of organized in terms of gathering
21:14
the data and then compiling it into reports
21:18
to give you more of an idea, the coalition more of an
21:21
idea of what we're actually seeing and what kind of information we're
21:27
So to me, the value of a coalition is in
21:30
its ability to bring together diverse organizations that
21:34
have a variety of skills, a variety of areas of focus and
21:38
expertise, and pulling all of
21:41
these different abilities together to tackle a complex issue.
21:46
So with that in mind, I would say that's
21:49
really what we've done. We rely really heavily on the
21:52
different skill sets that are contained within the member organizations. Oceana,
21:58
for instance, is not in every single country where we are prioritizing
22:03
in 2024. Neither is WWF, for
22:07
instance. So we seek to see who the
22:10
most active people are, understand what the situation is
22:14
based on their perspective, see who the potential, you
22:17
know, champions in government or industry are.
22:21
We focus on government, but some
22:24
of our partners work more closely with industry. So we're
22:30
Yeah. No, absolutely. And was it difficult to bring on?
22:34
some of those like smaller civil society groups that
22:38
were on the ground or was it did it make sense for
22:41
them to just be like Yeah, we want to contribute to this to this
22:45
coalition and contribute to the information that we can get worldwide as
22:51
When we reached out to most organizations, so long as
22:55
they were aligned with what is
22:59
contained in the global charter and those 10 policy
23:02
principles, we didn't really have too
23:06
much pushback. People were really
23:09
happy for the support and for the community of practice that hopefully
23:16
And do a lot of the different groups follow the Global Charter?
23:22
It was definitely new to some of them. So
23:27
within the Global Charter, there's everything from vessel monitoring,
23:31
which, if you're familiar with Global Fishing Watch, is something that
23:34
they really focus on, to collecting crew
23:38
data, which touches back on your human
23:42
rights question earlier. So some
23:46
of them have different areas of focus, but they generally are aligned
23:50
with the really broad definition of what's
23:53
included in transparency policy. They might
24:00
That makes a lot of sense. Now,
24:05
is it the goal of the coalition to have
24:09
all this information in a shareable database to all these coalitions,
24:13
or to the members of the coalition, having information on specific fisheries
24:17
of species in, say, Indonesia, to Greenland,
24:24
I don't think that we will ever be the arbiters of that data, so
24:28
to speak. But what we do aim
24:32
to contribute is knowing who has that data. So
24:35
that if a partner in the Philippines wants to know how
24:39
Indonesia accomplished measure XYZ,
24:47
Gotcha. So they can contact that affiliation and say,
24:50
yeah, we'd love to work with you. So it kind of fosters, it's kind
24:53
of a way to like, it is a network where you're fostering collaboration.
24:59
OK, I like that. I like that idea. Bit of a social media
25:07
One of the goals that we were originally tasked
25:10
with was developing a global community of practice so
25:15
that we could really start to build worldwide momentum towards
25:19
fisheries transparency because civil society is really
25:23
powerful and they've accomplished lots of things. But a lot of these
25:26
victories have been you know, somewhat isolated by geography.
25:30
So our funders and our supporters see
25:36
CFT, the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency, as
25:39
a vehicle to connect the dots between folks
25:47
Yeah. Well, even just to put them in contact is
25:51
a huge feat. You're familiar with RARE, the
25:55
group RARE? They do a great job at
25:59
their Fishing Forever program, where they
26:03
connect tropical countries, but more like villages of
26:06
tropical countries. They're connecting government officials, mayors, and so forth
26:10
in the Philippines to people in Haiti and
26:13
the Caribbean. And it's great to be able to get to share information, transfer
26:18
of information, look at similarities, look at differences, and how each
26:21
one of them have been able to tackle a challenge, say,
26:25
in fisheries for this instance, and then maybe they can use
26:28
some of that to apply their own. I think that's probably
26:32
the same kind of deal with this, just a little bit
26:35
higher level, because you're dealing with a lot of different countries. Is
26:40
Yeah, right. I mean, obviously, every
26:43
country has its own nuances. So there is
26:46
no one size all application for fisheries
26:50
transparency, unfortunately for us, I think. I
26:55
think it's just useful in its
26:58
most basic form for these organizations doing this really
27:01
hard work to know they're not alone, to hear some other ideas.
27:05
Maybe they try them. Maybe they already have before they worked or they didn't. But
27:10
they're not reinventing the wheel. And I think that community actually is
27:15
really valuable on its own without
27:21
Well, I mean, if you think about it, we globalize everything, pretty much. We globalize
27:24
transparency and figuring out how to tackle these challenges, right?
27:28
I think it's great. How many countries are currently working
27:36
You know what? I just asked somebody on my team.
27:44
Wow. That's incredible. 62 countries.
27:49
Now, this is something that I've always wanted to know. A
27:52
lot of times when we talk about fisheries
27:55
or overfishing, there's always certain countries that are highlighted as
27:59
being maybe not the best players in town or not
28:02
tracking They've had fishers from
28:05
that country doing some bad practices. And
28:10
so they get highlighted a lot. It's the same country. I don't really want to mention them
28:13
because I don't really want to bring them down. Because I assume the coalition, when
28:17
you go and work with a country that may have been highlighted before
28:21
as not monitoring IUU fishing as well as they could
28:25
be and stuff, Do you go not as like a finger
28:28
wagging, you're going in as, hey, we want to help you be as transparent as
28:32
possible. When you do approach or if you do
28:35
approach, what's the reaction of the
28:38
country, you know, of the government that you're working with? Are they a little bit
28:42
standoffish because fisheries can be such a big player
28:46
in terms of like GDP or is it more of like, yes,
28:49
we would love to work with you because we need some
28:56
In my experience, nine times out of the 10, it's the latter. Oh,
29:00
great. I think people are generally receptive
29:06
to what we're selling, for lack of a better word, because
29:11
I think that they see that it benefits their people. And
29:15
this is something that their constituents will get behind. But
29:19
that said, it should be noted that we
29:23
really focus our efforts, like I mentioned earlier, places
29:27
where we think we can have a tangible impact. So some
29:30
of this is already baked into the calculus in some respects, where
29:33
we see an opening with governments. But I'll
29:37
say, we've certainly engaged with governments who have maybe received
29:41
a yellow card or a red card in the past from the European
29:45
Union. And that is not disqualifying for us. That's an
29:49
Yeah, for sure, for sure, because that's an opportunity to work with them. Because look,
29:53
I think what some people don't understand when
29:56
they read articles like that, and I'm glad you brought up the yellow card,
30:00
red card with the EU, because they brought that out a
30:03
number of years ago. It's kind of like a soccer or
30:07
a football sort of approach to
30:10
saying you've done well, you haven't done well, or you're in the warnings zone.
30:15
It's very difficult for a government to track IUU. Is that not right?
30:18
It can't be easy because there's so many different scales
30:25
Yeah. And even another
30:28
layer to that is that there's lots of different agencies within
30:32
a singular government who might have some piece
30:36
of the fishing sector, whether it's commerce or
30:39
the Ministry of Fisheries or Ministry of
30:43
Foreign Affairs, they all sort of have various touch points, and they might have
30:46
different components of the full information picture,
30:50
which makes this, you know, pretty difficult. We saw the same thing
30:54
in maritime security, where within a single country,
30:58
you might not have the Coast Guard talking to the Ministry of Fisheries, and
31:01
that's a challenge. But it's also just not something that they've ever
31:08
That's true Yeah, so with the coalition What
31:11
are the keys to success in working with a
31:15
country to get them to be? Is
31:18
it to get them to be more transparent? Is that the goal when you work with the country
31:21
or you work with organizations like what? What is the keys to
31:25
getting them the more trans like the most transparency out of the of
31:30
So I would say it depends. There are certain countries which
31:34
are in the position of maybe stepping
31:37
up and taking a global leadership role in
31:41
transparency, and that would be the way that we frame the ask. They've
31:45
already shown some willingness to embrace transparency policies, and
31:48
we want them to go further. In other settings,
31:53
maybe there's been a considerable amount of investment
31:57
from our partners in the ground time, money, whatever.
32:01
And we're looking for the
32:05
lowest hanging fruit to just get momentum going. Like
32:08
I said, success is success. This is a big, long fight. So
32:12
we will take what we can get. And these are all victories worth
32:16
Right, for sure. When you approach
32:20
a country who hasn't maybe had a
32:23
lot of experience in this endeavor, I
32:29
guess, what are those first pieces that would
32:32
be like, hey, it's successful that you've already taken this first step? This
32:40
It totally depends, I think. It depends on
32:44
what the government has prioritized to this point. Maybe they
32:47
have been publishing lists of vessels
32:51
authorized to fish in their waters. That's a great
32:55
first step. Yeah. That's a really great first step. Because so
32:58
much can build from that. Maybe they've already
33:03
agreed to share their data with Global Fishing Watch. That's an amazing first
33:07
step, too. So it really just depends on what
33:11
their priorities are and where the political will is in
33:15
Right. Do you find it sometimes frustrating when you come up against
33:18
a country who resists? Or do they resist when
33:22
you try and work with them on certain aspects that would bring
33:29
I mean, sure. Uh, there's always setbacks in this kind of work
33:33
and it can be really frustrating, but I think our role as
33:36
the coalition is not so much to focus on that. It's to
33:40
support the folks on the ground who are really in the grind, um,
33:44
and make sure that they have what they need from
33:47
a global perspective, whether that's just another point of leverage or
33:51
some communication support or whatever we can offer. to
33:55
make sure that they're sort of staying in
33:59
Yeah, for sure. On the
34:02
other hand, on the other scale, you had mentioned you had countries
34:05
who have done pretty well and then you want to challenge
34:09
them a little bit further to tackle
34:12
even more of that transparency, where
34:16
are they at when you get to them and they'd be like, oh, these guys
34:19
are pretty far advanced? What have they done to
34:23
say, hey, they've done really well? You don't have to name a country, but
34:26
if there's something like an example that you can talk about where
34:30
there have been pieces where you're like, oh, wow, this country's fairly advanced. Let's
34:36
I've been talking a lot about the global charter, which I have a
34:40
copy of here. a country that
34:44
has maybe ticked off six of the ten,
34:49
or something like that, of these ten policy principles.
34:53
So what that would look like for us from that point on would be, you're
34:56
so close. You could be one of the first countries in
35:00
the entire world to be fully aligned
35:05
with the Global Charter for Fisheries Transparency. Doesn't
35:09
that sound appealing to you? And, you know, I
35:12
think we get varying levels of receptiveness to
35:16
that. But I think in
35:19
general, countries do want to be leaders, but
35:24
there is a lot of geopolitics at play, too. And we certainly understand
35:27
that. It's one of the biggest
35:31
challenges of this job. Fish
35:39
Exactly. That's such a great line. I love that.
35:43
You mentioned the 10 policies here. Can we actually
35:47
just list them just for the audience? Absolutely. If that's OK? Sure. I
35:53
No problem. So under vessel information, require
35:57
unique identification numbers for all fishing vessels, including transport
36:01
and supply vessels. Publish lists of licenses, authorizations,
36:05
and sanctions. Make public the beneficial ownership
36:09
of vessels. And stop the use of flags of convenience by
36:13
fishing vessels. That's a
36:17
good one. Under fishing activity, make
36:21
vessel position data public. Ban or
36:24
closely monitor at sea transshipment, or the transfer of
36:28
catch from ship to ship at sea. Right. mandate
36:33
seafood traceability. Uh, we're looking from boat to
36:36
plate. Yes. And then in governance and management
36:40
ratify international agreements that set standards for fishing vessels
36:44
and trade. Um, those include the FAO agreement
36:47
on port state measures, the international labor organization, fundamental
36:51
principles and rights at work, uh, Cape town agreement, um,
36:55
ensure equity, public and equitable access to fisheries data.
36:59
and participation in fisheries management and decision-making. And
37:04
finally, collect data on the conditions of fishing vessel crews and
37:10
Interesting. These are all like, they all
37:15
sound really great because there's a couple of them where I was like, oh
37:18
yeah, that's a big thing. The flag was a big thing, obviously. But
37:22
the first two seemed very simple. I'll explain the
37:25
flag in a little bit, or maybe have you explain the flag in a little bit. Some
37:29
people don't understand what happens at sea, and
37:32
you have a lot of experience with that, with your maritime security
37:36
experience as well as this experience. But the first two
37:39
seem very simple in terms of publishing data and making sure
37:42
that you have the vessel demarcation, like
37:46
the vessel numbers. as well as who's allowed to, you
37:49
mentioned it before, who's allowed to fish in those waters. I
37:52
think that really helps with that transparency, because
37:56
you have a lot of fishing vessels that come in
37:59
from a different country, from a foreign country, and come in and fish. Some
38:03
countries have handled it in very different ways, from sinking boats,
38:07
as extreme as sinking boats, to not doing anything at
38:10
all, or not even realizing that they're there, to putting in
38:14
specific pillars that would destroy any kind of trawl nets
38:18
to protect the local coral reefs and other
38:21
habitats. Can you just talk
38:24
about the vessel flags and
38:28
what that, I think it's the third priority, what that would mean
38:32
and what it means? Because some people here may not understand, like in the audience, may
38:35
not understand what the vessel means and searching
38:40
Absolutely. So every vessel needs to
38:43
have a flag of a country. And it's a bit
38:47
like having your car with
38:50
a license plate tagged to Virginia
38:55
or Colorado, say. And basically, the
38:59
flag under which your vessel sails,
39:04
you are meant to abide by the rules of that country.
39:08
So when we say flags of convenience, that's one
39:13
way of saying that those countries
39:16
that issue the flags are not necessarily connected
39:21
to the vessel in some way. The vessel is not necessarily from that
39:24
place. The crew is not necessarily from that place. We call that a
39:28
genuine link. And
39:32
when we say flags of convenience, sometimes these countries
39:38
are less inclined to, you know, enact
39:42
the rules at sea. So this enables
39:46
things like illegal fishing or human rights
39:52
Yeah, yeah, that's a great explanation. You know, that
39:56
always surprised me when I first learned about that when I was in school and I was just like,
39:59
I can't believe people can switch flags that easily and go
40:03
to places where they may not have the same rules as in
40:06
other places, they may not be as strict. You would think with maritime law, That
40:10
would have to be the same, but I guess every country goes by its own
40:16
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, the ocean is a big, wide
40:19
space, unfortunately, for enforcement purposes. But
40:24
there are things like there are measures in place, which is why
40:28
all of these principles kind of work in cohesion with one another. Later
40:32
on, the international agreements stipulation that's
40:36
included in the charter One of the things that that calls for is the
40:39
Port State Measures Agreement, which, in theory, would
40:45
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's wonderful. The other
40:49
thing that stood out, one of the policy points, was the stopping
40:54
of transferring at sea. And can you explain what
40:57
that means? Because this is a big thing when it comes to human
41:02
Yes, it is. Absolutely. So transshipment at
41:06
sea. is basically a fishing
41:09
vessel has a fresh catch, which
41:13
is then transferred while still at sea to a larger
41:17
transport vessel, which brings that catch back
41:20
to port to be sold. And so where
41:23
the human rights concerns come in is that this allows
41:27
those fishing vessels to stay at sea for extended periods of time.
41:31
We sometimes see months or years. And oftentimes,
41:35
the crew that are on the vessels are there against their will.
41:38
So they don't have access to fresh food or water, to
41:42
medical care, to Wi-Fi is a big
41:46
issue right now in the fishery sector that people are calling for.
41:50
And you can imagine the kinds of nefarious
41:53
things that might happen when people are at sea for years at
41:57
a time. So that's something
42:00
that we're looking to crack down on. We
42:04
say ban or closely monitor. at
42:08
sea transshipment. Sometimes transshipments are
42:11
inevitable and that's certainly understandable, but
42:15
they need to be logged and monitored to
42:22
Yeah, absolutely. Even fisheries observers who have been on
42:25
those transfer boats have had a lot of problems. There
42:28
was a couple years ago a gentleman who
42:32
was lost at sea because he kept reporting on
42:36
these types of nefarious transfers, not only from a human rights impact,
42:39
but even just from being unable to identify fish
42:42
because they've already been kind of processed, let's just say,
42:46
and they couldn't identify the fish. It could have been a shark. It could have been a swordfish. We didn't know.
42:49
We couldn't know, right? So that can be quite difficult. So
42:53
all these policies make a lot of sense in terms of
42:57
bringing this to transparency. Now, how long is it? You've
43:00
been with the director two years. Were you at the inception of
43:04
the coalition, director? I was. OK. So this has been involved. This is
43:07
two years. This is a long process to do.
43:11
Where would you rate the work that you've been able to
43:14
do now compared to when you first started? Obviously,
43:19
you've probably hit some pretty big milestones in terms of the number
43:22
of countries that are involved, number of organizations that are involved. But
43:25
where do you see, if you look past the
43:28
past two years, how fast you've progressed? And
43:32
then I'll ask the future as well. Where do you see things going
43:40
This is a marathon, and we are maybe on mile two
43:47
I like that. We've done a lot of work, but
43:52
it's going to be hard. But we've trained for this, so we're
43:56
Absolutely. Now, with that said, you talk about training, you talk about
44:00
people who are involved in the coalition. What are the type, we've
44:03
got a lot of people who are looking for ways to help out with
44:07
organizations and they've dedicated their careers to working
44:10
on the conservation side, not just on the science side,
44:13
but on the conservation side. What are the types of,
44:18
I guess, titles of people, of jobs that people
44:25
We have a couple of different sort of characterizations of
44:29
partners. So the coalition has a secretariat of
44:33
three staff and some additional support. So
44:37
it is myself, a communication staff person and a membership engagement and
44:41
outreach person. So that is the
44:46
nuclear family of the Coalition Secretariat.
44:51
But we have tremendous support from our co-chair organizations, which
44:55
include Oceana and the Environmental Justice Foundation, who
44:59
each provide staff time on a really regular
45:03
basis. So basically a full-time staff person from each of them as well,
45:06
who help organize with their offices on the ground.
45:11
So this is a lot of transparency policy manager,
45:15
communications staff, those kinds of folks. And
45:20
then we have even support from
45:23
Oceana's chief scientist and the COO at
45:27
EJF. So it's a really broad range of folks.
45:31
In terms of our member organizations, I would say that most
45:38
frequent title that we see is policy officer or some derivation
45:42
of that. Uh, there are a lot of lawyers in the mix, uh,
45:45
which is quite useful in terms of understanding what the legal
45:49
environment is in these places and what the opportunities are to
45:52
actually move laws ahead. Um, so
45:55
that's, that's always an incredible asset, uh,
45:59
to have those folks on our side as well. Um, and then
46:03
there's a lot of conservation biologists and marine biologists like yourself
46:07
and scientific communicators, which are all essential
46:12
Amazing, amazing. This has been wonderful.
46:16
I assume if people want more information, they can
46:19
go to the website fisheriestransparency.net. I'll
46:23
link to it in the show note. You do have a Twitter profile as
46:26
well, Fish Coalition. That's right. And so we'll put
46:29
that as well. And in
46:32
the next year or so, what kind of projects are you, as
46:36
the coalition, focusing on over the next year? Are there new countries that
46:39
are going to be coming on board? Or what is the priority for
46:44
So we are looking at a couple countries in Africa and Asia, where
46:48
we are hoping to advance specific transparency policies. We're
46:53
also looking to take advantage of the upcoming Our Ocean
46:56
conference in April. where what
46:59
we'd really like to see is the profile of transparency raised
47:03
in a way that we haven't seen yet. I understand that this can
47:07
be kind of an obtuse concept and we're trying to to combat that
47:10
too so that people understand that this is a tool
47:14
and it's an accessible tool which is
47:18
to everybody's benefit. So that is one of our our major
47:21
lifts for 2025 as well and
47:25
you know I think We are always open to
47:29
opportunities as they emerge, too. So I'm reticent
47:33
to say that we have a concrete plan at this point, because oftentimes
47:40
And especially as a network does, conversations happen.
47:44
You get introduced to different people who are in the game. you're
47:48
able to either grow the network from an organization, like
47:51
from bringing on more organizations, civil society groups,
47:55
or even by countries. And obviously, this is a growing
48:00
work, and it's complex, and not
48:04
an easy undertaking. I just want to thank you.
48:08
for not only coming on the podcast and letting us know about this, but also to
48:12
do the work that you do and manage it from such
48:16
a large scope. You have a
48:19
good nuclear family, but it is a small nuclear family that does a lot, and
48:23
we appreciate all the work that you do. And we'd love to
48:26
have you or some of your partners on to talk more about some
48:30
of the projects that have gone on in the last two years or
48:33
that are upcoming and you want to share Feel free to reach out, because we'd love
48:36
to have you on to get the word out there and get
48:40
this audience knowing. Because the one good thing about
48:43
this, they like to speak up as well. So they're going to talk about it as well.
48:47
So we'd love to have you back on as well. Well, thank you so much for having
48:52
You bet. Thank you. Thank you, Maisie, for joining us on
48:55
today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. It was great to
48:58
have you on. I'm looking forward to being able to talk about more projects that
49:02
the coalition is putting together or working on and some of
49:05
the results that have come out of the coalition in the future. Maisie
49:08
and I were talking after and she's like, hey, we can put you in touch with some great players
49:12
that we have that we'll be able to talk about. a lot of interesting projects
49:15
that we have. And so today is just sort of the kickoff of
49:19
this overview of the Coalition of Fisheries Transparency, being able
49:22
to get the whole purpose of it and why it's so important. And
49:26
then we're going to dive in deep into some of the other players that
49:29
are working on the ground with specific fisheries in
49:33
specific countries. And we're going to see the challenges they face,
49:36
the successes that they've had through those challenges, and also maybe
49:39
some of them not so successful. So we're going to talk about that because it's all about transparency.
49:44
And I think that's really important. So I hope you enjoyed this
49:47
episode as much as I did recording it and doing the interview for
49:51
it. Maisie was fantastic. So again, thank you to Maisie. But
49:54
do you have questions around fisheries transparency, IUU
49:58
fishing, or anything that has to do with overfishing, whether it
50:01
be on the high seas or coastal area or within the EEZ, the
50:05
Exclusive Economic Zone of each country? I would love to
50:08
hear it from you. You can just put a comment on On
50:11
the Spotify if you're watching this on Spotify or listening through Spotify or
50:15
on YouTube Or you can hit me up on Instagram at
50:19
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50:22
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50:32
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50:35
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50:39
I was a kid. We didn't even have internet when I was a kid. That's how old I am. I
50:42
had to go to the library, which is great, but a lot of the books that I had in
50:45
Ontario and Toronto did not have a lot of information on
50:51
sharks or on fisheries or on the ocean just in general, other
50:54
than large, beautiful photographs, didn't have a lot of information. The
50:58
encyclopedias can only take me so far. Now with the internet, now
51:01
with all the information that's out there, I'm trying to bring it together so
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51:22
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51:25
the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next