Harassment of fishery observers is more prevalent than previously thought, with a new study finding that less than half of observers who experience harassment disclose any incidents.
Funded by NOAA Fisheries, the study was published in the Frontiers research journal 28 January, 2025. NOAA researchers estimated that roughly 22 to 38 percent of fishery observers in the North Pacific are harassed annually, more than twice the number that file official disclosures.
“This is an incredibly important study that provides proof positive that official statements don’t capture the whole picture of harassment rates – it presents a new method for better accounting for non-disclosure. It also is the first time that we have been able to quantify non-reported harassment incidents of fishery observers,” NOAA Fisheries Acting Administrator Emily Menashes said. “The work of this team is a critical step to help us focus our continuing efforts to end these types of behavior and provide a safer working environment for fisheries observers.”
Instead of relying solely on official reports of harassment, researchers distributed an anonymous survey to fisheries observers working in the Pacific Groundfish and Halibut Observer Program – the nation’s largest observer program – from 2016 through 2022.
“Official statements submitted by observers reflect both an incident of harassment and also an observer’s willingness to disclose, tangled up together” Alaska Marine Mammal Observer Program Project Manager Lacey Jeroue, one of the study’s co-authors, said in a statement. “Relying on official statements alone makes it impossible to know if risk reduction strategies moved the needle on actual harassment or just the tendency to disclose it.”
The researchers found that disclosure rates were lowest for sexual harassment, with just 18 percent of observers estimated to file reports after experiencing sexual harassment. They were more likely to report cases of intimidation, coercion, and hostile work environment, with a 37 percent disclosure rate for those types of incidents. Cases of assault were most likely to be reported, with 57 percent of observers reporting assaults.
Female observers were harassed at higher rates than their male counterparts, with roughly 24 to 60 percent of female observers estimated to having been harassed annually, compared to a rate of 12 to 24 percent for male observers. However, researchers found that disclosure rates “were not influenced by observer gender.”
NOAA Fisheries has a zero-tolerance policy for observer harassment or assault.
“Enforcement investigations on the deterrence and detection of observer sexual assault, assault, harassment, observer safety, interference, and significant sample bias violations are our highest priority,” NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement Director James Binniker said in a statement. “There is zero tolerance for assault or harassment of observers in any form, and criminal prosecution will be sought for the most serious of these incidents. We encourage any observer who feels they may have been a victim of harassment to contact our 24-hour Law Enforcement Hotline at (800) 853-1964.”
