At the beginning of 2026, the E.U. launched a new digital traceability system it labeled CATCH, which requires digital catch certificates, containing such information as vessel identification numbers, the start date of a fishing trip, gear type, and location of the catch, to be attached to all fishery products entering the E.U.
The system aims to limit products with a possible connection to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices from entering the bloc, but six months in, many seafood industry representatives and IUU campaigners have said CATCH has simply introduced more bureaucracy while doing little to limit the flow of products connected to IUU fishing.
“The entire thing is a massive fraud. It has cost the E.U. and developing countries billions in implementation costs to produce zero effect on keeping IUU fish out of the E.U. market,” said Gilles Hosch, an independent fisheries and IUU researcher and the managing director of marine biodiversity consulting firm Diatom Consulting.
One of the CATCH system’s top purported benefits was the streamlined digitization of record keeping up and down the supply chain, but Hosch said in reality, the onus to digitize information has fallen on the last line of the chain, placing an extreme burden on exporters.
“The CATCH system is in fact not digitized … this is E.U. spin. The final economic operator, the one exporting to the E.U., must digitally introduce the accumulated supply chain paperwork into the platform, which for big shipments is massive. There are entire full-time equivalent staff at factories needed to just feed that circuit,” he said. “If the E.U. catch documentation scheme were digital, nobody would talk about the extra work. Only the captain would fill the initial info, and then certificates would be simply broken up and handed down the supply chain until arrival at destination digitally.”
Daniel Voces, the managing director of E.U. fishing industry representative group Europêche, agreed that the seafood supply chain’s current digital infrastructure – or lack thereof – has made it difficult to implement CATCH effectively.
“Although CATCH is mandatory for E.U. operators and authorities, its effectiveness depends heavily on the participation of third-country administrations, many of which lack the administrative capacity, compatible systems, or digital interconnections needed to use it efficiently. In practice, this places a disproportionate burden on E.U. operators, who must coordinate with third-country counterparts to ensure the system functions as intended,” he said.
Voces said Europêche supports the objective of digitizing catch certification but, after several months, CATCH is not yet fully operational in practice and continues to cause substantial difficulties for both the industry and public authorities.
“CATCH needs a lot more work due to technical deficiencies, limited interoperability with third countries, and insufficient guidance,” he said.
One such country that largely lacks the capacity to provide the digital data required to meet CATCH guidelines is Somalia.
Abdul Boss, the owner of Somalian seafood firm Horn Import and Export Fishing, said his company has been “affected many times” by E.U.’s new CATCH requirements.
“The increase of traceability requirements has created additional challenges … ensuring completed documentation through the supply chain has not always been straightforward,” he said. “As a result, much of Somalia's seafood has been exported indirectly through neighboring countries, such as Yemen, where processing, certifications, and export documentation could be completed.”
Representatives from other markets like Alaska have argued that the CATCH system does not take into account the unique components of each fishery supplying the E.U.
“You have small boats harvesting in a place like Bristol Bay, delivering to tenders, and those tenders delivering to shoreside plants. By the time that product has been processed in a shoreside plant, it could have come from any one of the vessels that participated,” At-Sea Processors Association CEO Matt Tinning said at this year’s Seafood Expo Global. “There is no sustainability concerns, so the original ask of the E.U. to get a written signature from the captain that moves with the specific salmon that they originally caught – that’s just not a proportionate response to a sustainability concern.”
Hosch said that effective digitized systems exist in the seafood industry and could be used as a model for CATCH, pointing to the management system set by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which oversees fishing for krill in the Antarctic.
“It requires the captain of the fishing vessel or his agent to fill the catch certificates online and submit them to his authorities for validation before entering the port where the fish is going to be landed,” he said. “Port authorities can then access the same system and verify that the catch certificate exists and has been validated and authorized by the flag state. After landing, somebody buys the catch, and that transaction is also recorded in the digital system. Eventually, it is exported, and that is recorded in the system. Laundering of non-originating catch – or catch not certified and validated by flag state authorities, including IUU catch – becomes truly difficult under such digitized and fully traced systems that guarantee integrity of mass balances as catch moves through the supply chain.”
By contrast, Hosch said the E.U. has maintained the paper-based system at the start of the supply chain and then required exporters to scan and record all related catch certificates into the CATCH system, leaving the door open for fraud to potentially occur anywhere along the chain.
“Since the entire supply chain remains paper-based, establishing where document fraud occurs will be impossible to establish in longer supply chains in the absence of Interpol-type international investigations,” he said.
Until CATCH is improved, Europêche is calling for a more pragmatic approach, according to Voces, “including a transitional period during which the previous paper-based system can continue to operate alongside CATCH while the new system is progressively improved and fully implemented.”
“As with any newly introduced system, a period of adaptation and refinement is necessary before it can function efficiently and deliver. That said, E.U. institutions have made it clear that CATCH is here to stay,” he said.
