The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), a global federation of transport workers’ trade unions, has found evidence of worker exploitation and abuse on vessels registered with the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO).
The ITF report, which was compiled from case studies focused on crime onboard vessels largely operating on what the report called “the squid route” in the Southwest Atlantic and Southeast Pacific between 2013 and 2023, found that crew deaths occurred as much as one every two months in the 10 years the report studied.
Sixty-six crew members from 59 vessels registered with the SPRFMO were returned to port dead or reported missing after falling into the ocean. Only 17 of the 55 deaths were from known causes. Numerous other crewmembers were returned to port sick enough to require medical attention.
The report aims to convince SPRFMO member states that coordinated in-port inspections are urgently necessary to prevent exploitation.
More specifically, according to Sabina Goldaracena and Sergio Almada, the report’s authors, vessels “carry their ‘criminal records’ with them,” making it exceedingly hard for in-port investigations to succeed without centralized information sharing. A shared method of recording violations would make it harder for vessels that have been caught abusing workers to continue their crimes unobserved, according to the authors.
In a release about the report’s finding, ITF Fisheries Section Coordinator Chris Williams said that “the SPRFMO must adopt minimum social standards to protect workers and ensure fair and sustainable fishing practices.”
The report also urged the SPRFMO to adopt a risk-based assessment strategy to maintain such standards, which would prioritze inspections of companies or vessels that had previously violated worker rights.
“By prioritizing inspections and enforcement efforts based on past violations, authorities can target high-risk fleets and deter criminal behavior,” the ITF said in a release. “By strengthening inspections, cooperation, and risk assessments, the SPRFMO, working closely with member states, can protect both marine resources and the workers bringing seafood to our plates.”
The SPRFMO has been the target of pressure in the past to crack down on illegal fishing practices among its member states.
In early 2024, for instance, more than 30 major seafood companies and industry organizations signed a letter to the SPRFMO calling for action on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which the signatories said was threatening vulnerable fish stocks.
In 2022, the Latin America-based Committee for the Sustainable Management of the Southern Pacific Jumbo Flying Squid (CALAMASUR) alleged that SPRFMO’s management of the South American squid fishery had become negligent in its failure to stop IUU depletion of the fishery.
The report’s authors pointed toward the recent conservation and management measure (CMM) proposed by New Zealand as one possible way to improve working conditions on SPRFMO-registered vessels but stressed that any measure would have to be binding and adopted across the member states.
