An investigative report from Greenpeace details abuses in the Thai fishing fleet and its effort to avoid scrutiny by moving into less-regulated areas of the Indian Ocean.
The 86-page report, Turn the Tide, claims that crackdowns on illegal fishing and human trafficking in Indonesia in 2015 resulted in a movement by the Thai fleet to the waters belonging to Papua New Guinea. When that country initiated its own enforcement efforts, the Thai vessels then moved to the Saya de Malha Bank, approximately 2,000 kilometers off the coast of east Africa, Greenpeace claimed.
Greenpeace said it came to its conclusions by analyzing nearly 200,000 Automatic Identification System (AIS) broadcasts for 28 Thai-operated reefers and historical global positioning data going back to 1999. The analysis completed by Greenpeace also compared Thai, Indonesian and Papua New Guinean vessel licensing lists, ownership structures and ship naming conventions to track the related movements of the Thai fishing fleet and its refrigerated cargo companion fleet.
“Our findings indicate that, over the last two years, Thailand’s overseas fishing fleets have repeatedly shifted their operations in response to improvements in monitoring, control, surveillance and enforcement (MCSE) efforts by flag, coastal and port states, moving to areas with weaker MCSE,” Greenpeace said in its report.
The report points to as many as 76 Thai-flagged vessels shifting their operations to the Saya de Malha Bank, which is described as an “Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area” by the World Wildlife Fund and which is jointly owned by Mauritius and the Seychelles. However, according to Greenpeace, “neither country exercises effective management over fisheries in this area.”
“This move to the Saya de Malha Bank reflects the sector’s long-standing practice of seeking out and taking advantage of poorly regulated fisheries and areas with weak enforcement,” Greenpeace wrote in the report. “In migrating to the bank, the Thai fleet — largely consisting of trawlers — had shifted to an area essentially devoid of effective management and controls on bottom fishing.”
Moreover, the Turn the Tide report accuses the Thai fleet operating in area of the Saya de Malha Bank of using transshipment and illegal labor practices in its fishing. Mainly relying on interviews with 15 crewmen who served aboard vessels in the fleet, Greenpeace claims workers suffered from poor nutrition, overwork, physical violence and long periods at sea without returning to port.
“The Thai government has tried to clamp down on human rights violations in the fishing industry but these Thai fleets remain as ruthless as ever,” said Anchalee Pipattanawattanakul of Greenpeace Southeast Asia. “Our investigation shows that rather than changing the way they fish to meet the regulations, they are just shifting to isolated and less regulated fishing grounds outside the region.”
In response to the report’s finding, Greenpeace is calling on the Thai Overseas Fishing Association and other Thai seafood organizations to improve their practices, and for a ban on all transshipment at sea.
