Argentinian Milko Schvartzman, a marine conservationist who has investigated foreign fishing fleets for more than 20 years, has been very vocal about his findings when it comes to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing on the high seas, specifically within Latin American countries’ exclusive economic zones. While researching human rights abuses aboard deepwater fishing fleets, he has found that many transgressing vessels turn to Uruguay’s Montevideo port for refuge.
With a population of 3.4 million, Uruguay is one of South America’s smallest countries, making it an unlikely spot for companies to land their catch, transship, or load cargo to take back to their countries of origin. Schvartzman told SeafoodSource about why companies involved in IUU fishing and other violations of international law choose Montevideo as their port of call.
This is the second of a two-part series regarding the lack of transparency at the Montevideo port and the fishing fleets that take advantage of it. Part one was published on 3 October.
SeafoodSource: Would you say that human rights abuses go hand in hand with IUU fishing?
Schvartzman: There is a relation, yes. I haven’t done a specific study, but it has to do with the lack of monitoring and control of operations. With Montevideo specifically, the port doesn’t inspect vessels or what is captured or unloaded there. There are also no inspections regarding the quality of life on board or ship worthiness and safety. Many of the vessels that arrive at the port don’t even have life vests or their name painted on the vessel, which is a direct violation of international maritime standards.
The reason that Montevideo is the port that receives the highest number of foreign fleets is not because the other ports in Latin America restrict the arrival of foreign-flagged ships or the unloading of catch. There are two reasons: economics and lack of control. Uruguay has a free port regime, dating from a law instituted in the 1990s where ships can unload merchandise and load up from another vessel without paying any taxes or being inspected. If that ship unloads in Argentina, they have to pay import taxes and, if they receive cargo to export, pay export taxes, too. Also, if a foreign ship docks in Chile to unload, for example, it is inspected by the Chilean navy for security reasons. The same is true in many other countries, but not in Uruguay.
So, there are many cases, such as a Taiwanese ship called Fuh Shing 11, which was reported in the Financial Times and other newspapers, of ships operating for many years in Montevideo. In 2019, Fuh Shing 11 docked in Cape Town, where it was inspected and then heavily fined because authorities found protected species that had been caught and squalid living conditions on board. It had violated a number of international standards. This Taiwanese vessel had operated regularly out of Montevideo. This was a case that clearly showed that it is all related – IUU fishing and human rights abuse – when there are no controls in place.
There are a number of other emblematic cases. In 2012, there were two South Korean ships – Oyang 75 and Oyang 77 – that had received various denouncements of human rights abuses, illegal fishing, fishing of threatened and protected species, and a number of other crimes committed aboard these ships. They were brought to court and sentenced, they were expelled from New Zealand, and they came to Uruguay. We [at Greenpeace Argentina] raised the issue due to the history they had in New Zealand.
In 2019, Oyang 77 was found fishing illegally in the waters of Argentina, was captured, and was brought to port. It had a history of violating several fishing norms and standards, and earlier this year, one of the crew had an accident on board, and they had to amputate all 10 of his toes. I discovered this via my contacts; there was no official registry of it. That ship clearly shows that most of the time, human rights violations and IUU fishing come in the same package.
These are just a few cases; I could talk about 20 more. When you start to investigate a vessel that had an incident, you start to find skeletons in the closet.
SeafoodSource: Do you have an approximate breakdown of IUU fleets’ countries of origin?
Schvartzman: The fleet that operates in the southwestern Atlantic off the coast of Argentinean Patagonia totals about 600 ships in high season. Now that we’re in low season, it’s about 120 vessels. Of the total, about 60 percent to 70 percent are Chinese ships, and the rest are divided between South Korea, Taiwan, and Spain.
That’s different from the squid-fishing fleet in the Pacific, operating around the Galapagos Islands, which total 300 ships, all of which are Chinese. Of those, about 180 are shared operations; they go from the Pacific to the Atlantic because the seasons are different.
Of the Chinese fleet, there are about 15 large fishing companies, and there are a few that just have one or two ships. Some of these companies are property of the Chinese state, called CNFC or China National Fisheries Corporation, and the rest are [also] subsidized. Eighty percent are jiggers, specifically designed for squid. The other 20 percent are trawlers or longliners, and they capture everything there, even sharks.
The Spanish fleet, which numbers about 50 ships and belongs to four or five companies, comprises all trawlers fishing with nets – the least-sustainable method because you get a lot of bycatch. The South Korean fleet has both trawlers and longliners, and the Taiwanese ships are almost all longliners. There are also some Taiwanese and Spanish fleets that operate off the coasts of Brazil and Uruguay, which number about 50 ships, and they’re all longliners, fishing tuna and blue sharks. They also use Montevideo as their main port.
SeafoodSource: Beyond being a free port, why is Montevideo such a highly used port?
Schvartzman: Very few people in Uruguay ever knew that there were so many foreign-flagged fishing ships using the port. They only thought there were container/cargo ships or tourism cruise lines coming through, as well as the ferries that cross over to Argentina every day. I didn’t know it either until I started investigating with satellite images. There were more than 500 of these ships docking every year! Now, there’s an average of 260 to 280.
Last year, I wrote a report for the journalist Ian Urbina, who is an American investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize and has written for The New York Times. [In the report], I analyzed and explained that there are many countries that offer offshore banking, such as Bermuda or Panama, and these are also countries that offer flags of convenience for vessels. Up until recently, Panama had the highest number of vessels registered in the world; today, it has the second most.
Companies register their ships in these fiscal paradises because the registry fee is cheap and because there are very few legal requirements. I investigated the case of a Japanese reefer that supplied the Antarctic whaling fleet and flew a Panamanian flag. In Japan, the annual registry fee for a reefer is USD 150,000 (EUR 141,000). In Panama, it is about USD 3,000 (EUR 2,800).
Uruguay has always served as an offshore banking country. In the 1990s, Uruguay would sell ship registries to foreign fishing ships for them to fly the Uruguayan flag. There were dozens of these ships. Between 1998 and 2000, authorities began to catch these ships performing IUU fishing acts in Australia, New Zealand, the Antarctic, and South Africa. In 2003, there was a ship called Viarsa 1, flying Uruguayan flags but captained by a Spaniard, that was fishing in Australian territorial waters near Heard Island. Authorities suspected it of illegally fishing toothfish and began to chase it. The ship escaped and what ensued was the longest pursuit of a ship in maritime history to that date.
The Australians chased that ship for 14 days all around the Indian Ocean, bordering the Antarctic toward the Atlantic Ocean. South African and British patrols joined the chase. It was basically broadcast live all over the world, and it was a scandal. In Uruguay, people began to ask what a Uruguayan-flagged ship was doing fishing illegally in the Indian Ocean. It was captured in the Atlantic Ocean as it was approaching Uruguay, and it was taken back to New Zealand, where the captain and ship officers were detained for a year. That scandal was so big that the government stopped granting licenses for fishing in international waters. From there, it changed from being a flag-of-convenience country to becoming a port of convenience.
So, instead of selling the flag, they began to sell port access, as well as logistics and unloading services. There was no control, not even of drug smuggling. Recently, there was also news that Montevideo port’s only container scanner had broken down. Normally, they would scan a small percentage of containers, but now, they aren’t able to scan anything. There is little political will to solve these problems.
Nearly all the registered cases of IUU fishing has been with ships that embark from Montevideo and return to Montevideo. I’ve done reports on this, basing the investigation on the false identification of vessels that dock at the port, and there were days where there were 12 vessels arriving under the same name and with the same registry number! This is going on right under authorities’ noses.
It’s not a bad thing that Montevideo receives lots of foreign fishing fleets. The problem is that there is no type of control, and the laws of Uruguay are not respected. The law prohibits transshipment within its economic zone, but ships do it right there.
SeafoodSource: What needs to be done to improve this situation?
Schvartzman: Many countries in Latin America have issues with IUU fishing and human rights abuse, but no country is 100 percent victim nor 100 percent responsible. Uruguay has a big responsibility here, but so do Argentina and Chile. The first step that needs to be taken is for countries to advance in coordinating common policies to fight against IUU fishing, defend the region’s resources, and protect human rights.
The next step has to do with transparency, which is fundamental here. In some cases, instead of transparency increasing, it is decreasing. You need to know what ships have docked, what they are unloading, what they fished, and if they have prior records or whether they have undergone inspections. Inspections are necessary for all shipments. We have official reports from Uruguay, and during a year, they only inspected 10 percent of the ships that arrived, and that was done without even getting onto the ship.
SeafoodSource: Have you ever felt in danger or received threats for reporting on these issues?
Schvartzman: No. I know there are significant interests here that can feel threatened by my work – by disseminating this and bringing it to light. By interests, I’m talking about [Montevideo-based transport and integrated logistics services company] Christophersen Group, which contributed USD 1 million (EUR 945,000) to the campaigns of both presidential candidates [in 2019], making it the third-largest donor to the Uruguayan presidential race.
What most worries me, though, is China because [it has] the most significant fleet – in both quantitative and qualitative terms – and are the largest perpetrators of IUU fishing. The country also has the highest number of denounced human rights abuses. So it worries me somewhat, but I’ve never felt that I’m at risk.
Photo courtesy of Milko Schvartzman/Mision Atlantico
