A recent investigation from nonprofit Greenpeace into longline fishing vessels in the North Pacific has described high levels of shark bycatch and likely human rights violations.
The investigation studied vessels operating in the area of the Emperor Seamounts, a vast underwater mountain chain north of the U.S. state of Hawaii, during a 25-hour period.
Its goal was to document any destructive fishing practices and labor abuses aboard vessels operating in the Seamounts, which is currently designated as a UN Ecologically and Biologically Sensitive Marine Area.
In a release about the project, Greenpeace described the Seamounts as a “critical biodiversity hotspot [that] is home to tuna, whales, and deep-sea coldwater corals – some of the oldest living species on Earth – and plays a vital role in the cultural heritage and food security of Indigenous Hawaiians and other Pacific communities.”
The report found what Greenpeace called “alarmingly high levels” of shark fishing in the area, with a number of vessels targeting sharks. A total of 84 sharks were recorded caught, amounting to three sharks per hour over the 25 hours of documentation. It also found high levels of bycatch overall and 4,000 empty hooks pulled in, which Greenpeace said demonstrated “the significant potential for longlines to contribute to the severe depletion of marine species in the region.”
“We came to the North Pacific to investigate fishing vessels on their fishing and labor rights practices, and what we found were sharks indiscriminately pulled out of the ocean, often fighting for their lives, among seemingly endless empty hooks," Greenpeace Beyond Seafood Campaign lead Charli Fritzner, who participated in the investigation, said. "This pattern was repeated across all five longline hauls observed and is a worrying indication of the increasing emptiness that destructive fishing practices have caused in our oceans, enabled by woefully inadequate high seas regulation.”
Beyond the fishing practices documented, the investigation reported harsh labor conditions which Greenpeace said fell far below the international norms set by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP).
Though the crews of the encountered vessels reported being at sea for only three months, Greenpeace pointed out that fishers, in general, spend months or even years aboard their vessels. Crewmembers, especially on Taiwanese-flagged longliners, are often unable to communicate with their families or unions for months at a time. The Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace vessel which conducted the investigation, gave crew members access to satellite internet to make calls and send messages after securing the permission of vessel captains.
“There is often an overlap between labor rights abuses and illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing activities," Greenpeace said. "Together, these linked issues perpetuate the depletion of tuna stocks, the bycatch of marine life caught on tuna lines, and the suffering of fishers subject to labor abuses on board.”
On behalf of Greenpeace, Fritzner urged the Biden-Harris administration to expand the Seafood Import Monitoring Program “to include all species and forced labor [produced through] IUU.”
The Rainbow Warrior is currently continuing to travel throughout the Hawaiian Islands, working in partnership with Indigenous Hawaiians to support protection efforts.
Greenpeace said that it hopes that the findings of the investigation will add evidence to the case for the Seamounts being recognized as a marine protected area under the UN's Global Ocean Treaty.
