Imagine your work involved being surrounded by people who see you as the enemy and an informer. You are alone, you live in your workplace and cannot leave, many of your workmates carry knives and your personal safety is far from guaranteed. This sounds like an undercover military intelligence officer but is actually what some fishery observers endure, out at sea on board fishing boats for weeks at a time to act as witnesses and record keepers to how fish is caught. The Association of Professional Observers (APO), have recorded that, since 1983, 22 people have died or disappeared at sea in the course of doing their job.
Let’s rewind a little to explain what fishery observers do. Not long after I started work in the mid-1980s, the concern over catching dolphins along with tuna in the Eastern Tropical Pacific hit the news and the Dolphin Safe logo became one of the first ecolabels in the industry. Independent observers on board fishing vessels were an integral part of the dolphin protection program.
If you are unfamiliar with this problem, tuna boats off the coast of Mexico, California and Ecuador realized that dolphins hunted tuna and that setting a net around a pod of dolphins could also haul in a good catch of valuable fish. The nets used are called purse seines, the “purse” bit coming from the way a curtain of net is set around a shoal, the ends joining to encircle it, before the bottom of the net is drawn tight, capturing everything inside. If dolphins, made family favorites by Seaworld aquariums, the TV series Flipper and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, are also trapped, they drown. Not good for the dolphins and not good PR for the tuna industry.
In 1987, an undercover film made by a biologist called Sam LaBudde, after five months on board fishing vessels, shocked the industry. Tuna vessels in the Eastern Tropical Pacific routinely set nets around dolphin pods, killing hundreds of thousands of animals every year.
To calm horrified buyers, in 1990 a Dolphin Safe logo was developed by the Earth Island Institute. Although other logos followed, this was the first to demand that observers were deployed onto fishing vessels to confirm nets were not set around dolphins. In the USA, it became law that only canned tuna that met these conditions could carry the Dolphin Safe logo.
In my early years, I would inspect tuna canneries, checking catch documentation and also looking at the fish for signs of being caught by drift nets, another indiscriminate fishing method that kills all sorts of marine mammals. As I looked for details of compliance with the Dolphin Safe program, I would think about being in the shoes of an observer, alone on board a boat, far from land, surrounded by a crew and captain who make money by catching as much fish as possible, and wondered how independent these observers were allowed to be. Faced with a belligerent crew member, short-tempered after sleep-deprived days at sea and wielding a filleting knife, I might occasionally look the other way rather than risk a swim with the sharks.
Anyone who has been on a fishing boat knows that the accomodation is, well let’s say, no frills. What must it feel like to go to your cramped and possibly cockroach-infested bunk at night, knowing you are paid to be an official whistleblower, seen as a spy and informer by those around you?
Recently, I read an article on the Mongabay website[1] that made me think again about this invidious responsibility. It highlighted the story of Edison Valencia, an observer working on an Ecuadorian fishing vessel, who allegedly jumped overboard. The article talks about the loss of a popular and dedicated young man but also how other observers have been mistreated. It isn’t unusual for the observer to be given the worst accommodation on board, poor rations and sanitation, all for meager wages of around $40 per day. This, although bad enough, is not the worst that can happen, as Edison and at least 21 others seem to have found out.
Observers these days do more than just looking for dolphins being deliberately caught, they also gather data about how much tuna is caught, their size and maturity, other species landed and general fishing activities to help authorities with their fishery management programs. This still risks putting them at odds with the captain and crew if the boat is more interested in profit than sustainability.
We rely on good data to properly manage fisheries. Part of this data will come from observers who put themselves at risk for very little return. While many boats, particularly the larger vessels, are well managed with good discipline on board and show respect for observers, not all are like this. All fishers, observers and crew, should be safe at sea and have the protection of the law but there seems very little out there to help. It’s great to see an Observer Bill of Rights[2], launched in 2000 and supported by the APO, but the APO themselves admit in the Mongabay article that this is not fully implemented. In 2018, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), which employs observers, signed a resolution outlining action to take in the event of an observer disappearing at sea but this seems like locking a stable door after the horse has gone.
It's time this stopped. Ecolabels, whether offering Dolphin Safe or sustainable assurances, should require safeguards for observers and crew. There needs to be a common standard of safety for everyone on board a vessel and clear investigation procedures in the event of injury or disappearance. We don’t accept evidence in a court of law if it is obtained under duress so we should not use observer fishery data unless it is produced without adversity, particularly if the data is to support a sustainability certification. Buyers should be asking how observers are treated on board vessels and the organisations that manage observers, like IATTC, must take more responsibility.
Markets made a stand to protect dolphins in the 1990’s. It sounds as though the observers, who are an integral part of this and other essential fishery work, need our protection now.
Footnote:
The safety and welfare of observers is, unfortunately, part of a much wider problem of human rights abuses, modern day slavery and crime that is inflicted upon fishing vessel crews, usually when vessels are engaged in illegal fishing[3]. Vulnerable, migrant workers can be recruited as crew, then have very little protection once the vessel is at sea. Oxfam, the Environmental Justice Foundation, Human Rights at Sea and other organisations are working to combat this problem and improve conditions for crews at sea, support them if you can.
[1] https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/a-fisheries-observers-disappearance-sheds-light-on-a-bigger-problem/
[2] https://apo-observers.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/18142557/international-observer-bill-of-rights-guide.pdf
[3] https://oceansolutions.stanford.edu/key-initiatives/addressing-illegal-fishing-and-labor-abuses#:~:text=Fishing%20vessels%20engaged%20in%20IUU,and%20sometimes%20facing%20wanton%20brutality.
[1] https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/a-fisheries-observers-disappearance-sheds-light-on-a-bigger-problem/
[2] https://apo-observers.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/18142557/international-observer-bill-of-rights-guide.pdf