Fish are a vital source of protein for many people. Unfortunately, they are a source of local and international conflict for many people, too. These conflicts typically arise from who is catching which fish, where and how they are catching them, and the quantities being caught. However, such details can be surprisingly hard to discern.
Maisie Pigeon is the director of the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency, a network of over 50 civil society organisations across the world that seeks to make those details more transparent. She argues that publicising information on who owns a fishing vessel and its activities can be a win-win for everyone involved: transparency shrinks the space for overfishing and illegal activity, thereby boosting fish stocks and benefiting small-scale fishers.
Dialogue Earth: How did you become involved in fisheries transparency?
Maisie Pigeon: I spent about 15 years in my career working in maritime security, starting in counter-piracy work. That evolved into other kinds of maritime crime, including wildlife trafficking by maritime routes, mixed maritime migration, and IUU [illegal, unreported and unregulated] fishing. A lot of these things come from the same place, and they share a solution as well, which is better information, which allows us to make more effective policy.
In Somalia, for example, there was a lot of linkage between illegal fishing from foreign fleets and the eventual pirates who ended up going out to sea and taking vessels hostage. [Editor’s note: some Somali fishers were driven to piracy after overfishing by foreign fleets left them with no fish to catch.] Where it really matters, in some respects, is the policy implications. The more information we have about what’s happening on the ocean, the better off we all are.
What do transparent fisheries look like to you?
The Coalition for Fisheries Transparency is a network of 50 civil society organisations all around the world. We are organised around a framework called the Global Charter for Fisheries Transparency, which is a set of 10 policy principles that we consider to be best practice for fisheries transparency.
The charter is divided into categories: vessel information, fishing activity, and governance and management. If a country is really strong in fisheries transparency, they are likely adopting and implementing policies related to all 10 of those policy principles.
This charter sets out the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency’s 10 principles, which are supported by all members.
The principles are grouped into three sections:
Vessel information: insisting upon vessel identification numbers; publishing lists of vessels and other information; and publicising information on vessels’ “beneficial ownership”.
Fishing activity: stopping flags of convenience; making vessel locations public; and banning the transfer of fish between boats at sea unless it is pre-authorised, monitored and publicised.
Governance and management: mandating “boat to plate” seafood traceability; complying with international instruments; publishing all fisheries data and scientific assessments; and collecting and publishing data on crew and employment.
Let’s talk about one item on the charter: beneficial ownership. What is this and why is it important?
The disclosure of beneficial ownership information aims to identify and make public the “real owners” who ultimately own, control and profit from companies and vessels. That information can be complicated or obscured through practices like the use of shell companies, for instance.
This is probably one of the more complicated principles in the charter. But beneficial ownership is really important, because these are the actors who are ultimately receiving profit from the illicit activities conducted by these vessels. If we want to stop this kind of illicit activity – whether it’s illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, or human rights and labour abuses on board these vessels – the person who needs to be held accountable is the one who owns the vessel.
What countries would you point to as leading in fisheries transparency?
Lots of countries around the world are adopting and implementing transparency policies.
I think South Korea is making really big advances. The United Kingdom is making really big advances in transparency policy as well, and then also places like Chile have adopted several measures aligned with Global Charter principles. We see places adopting more specific policies, too. So that might be, in Ghana [for example], better enforcement of the beneficial ownership policy already in law.
I think a lot of countries are at different starting points, which can make this challenging for some. And it might just be because they do not have the foundation laid that the UK has, which was inherited from its time in the EU, for instance.
Is transparency getting better or worse?
Overall, there is more of a movement towards transparency than there was 10 years ago. It’s something that’s being talked about as an important tool to improve fisheries governance.
And the case that we should make, as this network of civil society organisations within the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency, is that the reforms we’re advocating are both really efficient and cost-effective. These are not reforms that have a really high price tag, and I do think that carries some weight with governments.
Transparency can be a scary word sometimes. But the message that we’re really trying to get across is that these policies are benefiting the coastal communities in these countries that rely on fisheries.
Do you see transparency as a benefit, or as stamping out bad practice?
Good transparency policy accomplishes both things.
If you think of vessel tracking, for instance. That allows governments or other authorities to understand which vessels are where, and whether they should be there. It also provides this added safety benefit to the crew. That’s a mutually beneficial policy.
Is there anything working against more transparent fisheries?
Competing priorities have governments’ attention.
Sometimes they’re hearing from lobby groups representing other industries that perhaps do not see the benefits of transparency, or benefit from opacity – the absence of transparency. Sometimes we encounter privacy concerns from the fishing industry, who might not want to share information about where they’re catching fish for very reasonable reasons. Sometimes they just don’t want to lose the competitive advantage.
In some places, there unfortunately is an element of corruption, which gets in the way. Because absence of information allows individual actors to make a lot of money operating in the shadows. It unfortunately permeates a lot of these industries.
Which industries are we talking about? If transparency benefits largely accrue to coastal communities and smaller-scale fishers, is it fish processing and industrial fishing companies that are against it?
That’s largely right. There are obviously industrial partners who are working to increase transparency in their supply chains, too. I don’t want to paint with a broad brush. We have lots of partners who work exclusively with the commercial fisheries industry, and there are good, honest partners who see an economic benefit from traceability policies, for instance. But I think, in general, that is a fair characterisation.
What was the catalyst for the coalition to form?
Our funders in 2022 were seeing all these successes on a local or national basis. But we weren’t really seeing global momentum towards transparency. The coalition was established to connect and coordinate these actors working in different geographies. We want to amplify and accelerate the movement of transparency on a global scale.
We have set up meetings between organisations working on beneficial ownership in South America and beneficial ownership in West Africa, for example. Similarly, we have coordinated partners working in Fiji and partners working in the Philippines on crew and labour issues.
If you had a crystal ball and could see what fisheries and coastal communities look like when the fisheries become transparent, how do they look?
I’ll give you an example. I was in Senegal a couple months ago, and we were speaking with local fishermen in Dakar. They would be out to sea for an entire day and come back, and maybe have one basket of fish. They are tangibly feeling the lack of long-term sustainability in their fisheries right now.
So, if the crystal ball was showing me transparent fisheries, these local fishermen would be coming back with boats full of fish that they can sell locally, and making good money for their efforts while local communities are well-fed. That is what we are working towards.
