[Senate Hearing 119-152]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 119-152
FINDING NEMO'S FUTURE:
CONFLICTS OVER OCEAN RESOURCES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COAST GUARD, MARITIME,
AND FISHERIES
of the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 12, 2025
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
61-519PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
TED CRUZ, Texas, Chairman
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota MARIA CANTWELL, Washington,
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi Ranking
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
JERRY MORAN, Kansas BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee GARY PETERS, Michigan
TODD YOUNG, Indiana TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
TED BUDD, North Carolina TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
ERIC SCHMITT, Missouri JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOHN CURTIS, Utah BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico
BERNIE MORENO, Ohio JOHN HICKENLOOPER, Colorado
TIM SHEEHY, Montana JOHN FETTERMAN, Pennsylvania
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia ANDY KIM, New Jersey
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware
Brad Grantz, Republican Staff Director
Nicole Christus, Republican Deputy Staff Director
Liam McKenna, General Counsel
Lila Harper Helms, Staff Director
Melissa Porter, Deputy Staff Director
Jonathan Hale, General Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COAST GUARD, MARITIME, AND FISHERIES
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska, Chairman LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware,
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi Ranking
JOHN CURTIS, Utah BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
BERNIE MORENO, Ohio GARY PETERS, Michigan
TIM SHEEHY, Montana TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on June 12, 2025.................................... 1
Statement of Senator Sullivan.................................... 1
Article dated October 9, 2023 from The New Yorker entitled,
``The Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat'' by Ian Urbina.... 45
Statement of Senator Blunt Rochester............................. 3
Statement of Senator Cruz........................................ 5
Statement of Senator Cantwell.................................... 39
Witnesses
Hon. Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island.......... 6
Gregory B. Poling, Director and Senior Fellow, Southeast Asia
Program and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Center for
Strategic and International Studies............................ 8
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Nathaniel Maandig Rickard, Co-Managing Partner, Picard Kentz &
Rowe LLP....................................................... 14
Prepared statement........................................... 15
Gabriel Prout, President, Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers............. 22
Prepared statement........................................... 24
Whitley Saumweber, Director, Stephenson Ocean Security Project,
CSIS........................................................... 27
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Appendix
Letter dated June 11, 2025 to Hon. Dan Sullivan and Hon. Lisa
Blunt Rochester from Lisa Wallenda Picard, President and CEO,
National Fisheries Institute................................... 61
Article dated November 20, 2023 entitled, ``From Bait to Plate--
Tracking the Chinese Fishing Ships Linked to Rights and Labour
Abuses at Sea'' by Ian Urbina.................................. 62
Response to written questions submitted by Hon. Ted Cruz to:
Gregory B. Poling............................................ 65
Nathan Rickard............................................... 66
FINDING NEMO'S FUTURE:
CONFLICTS OVER OCEAN RESOURCES
----------
THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2025
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime, and Fisheries,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
room SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Dan Sullivan,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Sullivan [presiding], Cruz, Moreno, Blunt
Rochester, Cantwell, and Whitehouse.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DAN SULLIVAN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA
Senator Sullivan. Good morning. The Subcommittee on Coast
Guard, Maritime and Fisheries will now come to order. The
Subcommittee is meeting today for our inaugural hearing of the
newly created subcommittee on the Coast Guard, Maritime and
Fisheries.
I am honored to be chairing this subcommittee, and excited
to be serving with my Ranking Member, colleague, Senator Blunt
Rochester, as the Ranking Member of this important
subcommittee. I look forward to working with Senator Blunt
Rochester and her team, and all the members of this
subcommittee in the 119th Congress.
Today's hearing will focus on international conflict,
criminal activity, and yes, even slave labor associated with
the ocean. We are particularly focused on the fight for
fisheries' resources, geopolitical flashpoints, where conflict
is likely to arise in the role of both state and non-state
actors involved in conflict with criminal activity in the
fishing sector. And of course, we want sustainable, lasting
fisheries.
Additionally, we will discuss measures being taken to
address the growing challenges and criminal activity
surrounding these resources and conflicts, and what more can be
done. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, also known
as IUU fishing, poses a significant threat to global marine
ecosystems, economies, sustainable fisheries, and food
security.
It is estimated that IUU fishing accounts for up to 20
percent of the global catch, which translates to global losses
between $10 billion and $50 billion annually for fishing fleets
that actually fish legally, like ours in America. The scale of
IUU fishing varies by region, with some areas experiencing more
severe impacts due to lax enforcement, corruption, and high
demand for seafood.
Of course, the Chinese Communist Party in China plays a
significant role in this problem in the global fishing industry
and is the worst offender of IUU fishing by far--no surprise.
The Chinese government has provided billions of dollars in
subsidies to its distant water fishing fleets, gray fleets as
we sometimes call them, enabling their fishing sector to grow
exponentially.
According to Global Fishing Watch, China operates
approximately 57,000 fishing vessels, 57,000, which accounts
for 44 percent of the world's total fishing activity. Operating
in tandem with the Chinese military to protect its fishing
fleet, the Chinese fishing boats benefit from the protection of
the Chinese coast guard and navy, ensuring their ability to
pilfer resources around the globe.
And if you care about environment and healthy ecosystems,
this should be a top concern of yours, China ravaging our
oceans. The scale of China's fishing activities raises concerns
about the sustainability of global fish stocks around the world
and the geopolitical tensions that can arise from maritime
disputes.
China is a concern, but Russia is as well. Close to Alaska,
Russia and other vessels conduct IUU fishing near our exclusive
economic zone, our EEZ. And although Russia banned imports of
U.S. seafood into Russia over 10 years ago, Russia has been
able to bring their seafood into the U.S., sometimes using
loopholes through China, as recently as the late 2023--in late
2023.
IUU fishing is not an issue just for the United States.
U.S. fisheries are the most sustainable fisheries in the world.
But sustainably sourced, legally caught, high-quality seafood
can't compete with illegally sourced seafood that is being
plundered from our oceans.
And I might add, due to some great reporting, and I am
going to reference it here in this hearing from Politico
Magazine, The New Yorker, China also uses slave labor on many
of its fishing vessels. Pretty hard to compete against slave
labor if you are an American fisherman. IUU fishing not only
distorts the true cost of seafood sold in markets, but it is
often linked overseas with transnational crime, forced and
slave labor, and even human and drug trafficking.
So, the key to preventing IUU fishing is to lead
international efforts to address the issues at its sources
globally. And through the years, Congress and the Executive
Branch, Democrats and Republicans, have worked together with
global partners and have focused on IUU fishing. I am proud to
see my colleague and friend, Senator Whitehouse, here.
He and I recently introduced our Fighting Foreign Illegal
Seafood Harvest, also known as the FISH Act, a bipartisan bill
that just recently in this committee passed unanimously. It
puts IUU fishing vessels on a blacklist, raises costs for IUU
vessel owners and importers, and supports increased Coast Guard
enforcement and work with our partners.
It builds on previous bipartisan legislation that this
committee has championed, particularly Senator Wicker's
Maritime Safe Act. In April, President Trump signed an
Executive Order entitled, ``Restoring American Seafood
Competitiveness''.
My office, and my team and I, were proud to work closely
with the Trump Administration on this important Executive
Order. This order aims at strengthening measures to combat IUU
fishing, including preventing IUU seafood from entering the
U.S. market and supporting international efforts to address the
issue at its source.
We look forward to working with the Administration on these
efforts. But it is not all bad news. This is, after all, the
Subcommittee in charge of the Coast Guard, and I believe we are
going to be embarking on a golden age for our Coast Guard.
In the budget reconciliation bill, right now there is $22
billion focused on the Coast Guard of the United States. That
will likely be the biggest investment in the Coast Guard in the
history of the United States of America. So there are a lot of
good things happening with regard to our Coast Guard.
The U.S. has a vital role to play, a leading role to pay in
combating IUU fishing through regulatory measures,
international cooperation, consumer awareness, and passing the
FISH Act. By preventing IUUC seafood from entering our market,
the U.S. can help protect legitimate fishermen, some of whom we
will hear from today, and promote sustainable fishing practices
worldwide.
With that, I want to thank all of our four witnesses for
being here today. And I am going to recognize my Ranking
Member, but I see the Chairman of the Commerce Committee has
arrived. And perhaps, Mr. Chairman, I don't know if you want to
say a few words.
The Chairman. I will defer to the Ranking Member.
Senator Sullivan. OK. Now over to my colleague, Senator
Blunt Rochester.
STATEMENT OF HON. LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM DELAWARE
Senator Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Chairman Sullivan. I am
looking forward to serving with you on this very important
committee--subcommittee. And I am also glad that you are
holding this very important hearing, and for the Chairman's
dedication to these issues, particularly through the
introduction of the FISH Act, along with Senator Whitehouse who
joins us today.
This bill reflects the seriousness and the urgency of
illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. And I look
forward to working with you as we move this bill forward. I
also want to thank our witnesses for being here today and
sharing their expertise, and for the critical work that you do
each and every day to protect our oceans and our economy.
Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is a serious and
growing global threat.
Not only does it harm American fishermen and coastal
communities--which Delaware actually is a coastal community and
has many coastal communities--but it destabilizes marine
ecosystems, and even has national security implications. In my
home state, the mislabeling of Chesapeake blue crab undermines
the livelihoods of thousands of Delawareans.
It is reported in a 2015 study, in an investigation they
found that fraudulent labeling of domestic crab occurred in
about 48 percent of mid-Atlantic crab cakes. The good news is
we have experts at NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service
that collect data on this industry to enable enforcement of
science-backed regulations.
Unfortunately, the Administration has fired about 18
percent of NOAA's fisheries staff and is looking to cut the
budget by 30 percent. To make matters worse, cuts to the rest
of the agency are undermining this work even further.
NOAA fisheries relies on the NOAA fleet to conduct stock
assessment and surveys. A fleet that requires skilled
credentialed civilian mariners to operate. And due to the
ongoing hiring freeze, 30 percent of NOAA's research ships will
not leave the dock this summer. Fewer research ships in the
water will result in fewer assessments and surveys, opening the
door for illegally caught and fraudulently labeled products to
flood the market, which would undercut our own domestic seafood
industry and threaten consumer safety.
Illegal fishing is also increasingly connected to criminal
activity like forced labor, human trafficking, and organized
smuggling operations. Forced labor is rampant in China's
seafood industry and processing plants, where many reports
detail how Uyghurs are forcibly moved and made to work in
unsafe conditions to satisfy market needs.
These violations underscore the need for more transparency
with the seafood supply chain. Protecting American consumers
and business, that is the goal, but we can't achieve that goal
without the expertise, enforcement, and data from NOAA
fisheries. Now I would like to pivot to the role of the U.S.
Coast Guard and what it plays in our country.
I too am really proud to be on this subcommittee as a
Ranking Member, and to work with our incredible Coast Guard.
Their presence deters bad actors and signals to the world that
the United States takes illegal fishing seriously.
Unfortunately, the Administration has shifted limited Coast
Guard resources away from the coastal communities who need them
most. And I am especially concerned about the redirection of
the Coast Guard aircraft and ships away from core mission
priorities, like fisheries enforcement and search and rescue,
to be used for alien expulsion flights on behalf of ICE.
This is not their mission, and we should be working
together to ensure the Coast Guard maintains access to the
resources they need to do their jobs. Illegal, unreported, and
unregulated fishing is an environmental issue, an economic
issue, a national security issue, and a moral issue, and it is
time for us to invest in the policies, agencies and personnel
NOAA and the Coast Guard need to protect American fishermen and
the consumers that rely on access to quality, ethically sourced
seafood.
I look forward to today's discussion, and to continuing the
incredible bipartisan work of this subcommittee and this
committee, and our work to address this global challenge. Thank
you, and I yield back.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Senator Blunt Rochester. I am
honored that the Chairman of the Commerce Committee, Senator
Cruz, my good friend, is also here. So, Mr. Chairman, some
remarks from you would be very welcomed.
STATEMENT OF HON. TED CRUZ,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TEXAS
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank
Chairman Sullivan for holding this hearing to discuss the
ongoing threat to America's economic and maritime security,
which is illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. This
problem is global, but its effects are being felt right here at
home, especially in my home state of Texas.
For years, Mexican fishermen have brazenly crossed into
U.S. waters off the Texas coast to poach red snapper in the
Gulf of America. Some of these illegal boats have hauled in
thousands of pounds of red snapper at a time, stripping our
waters of one of the Gulf's most iconic and economically
valuable fish.
They set long lines and nets, hauling out tons of snapper,
only to export many of those fish back to the United States.
These actions are illegal and flat out theft. This isn't just
about fish. Some of the very same vessels crossing into U.S.
waters to steal red snapper also support Mexican cartels
involved in smuggling drugs and smuggling people.
These poachers are robbing from hardworking Texas fishermen
who play by the rules and rely on fishing to support their
families and their communities. The U.S. Coast Guard, the Drug
Enforcement Administration, and NOAA are all grappling with
this complex issue, trying to maintain the integrity of our
waters.
Last year, the Coast Guard seized more than 18 tons of
illegally caught fish from Mexican lanchas, a dramatic increase
from just under 3.5 tons in 2017. And already this year, The
Coast Guard has arrested more than 50 Mexican fishermen and
seized thousands of pounds of illegally caught fish, further
underscoring the need for additional measures to protect our
resources.
Earlier this year, this committee advanced the bipartisan
Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act, which I
introduced, along with Senator Schatz of Hawaii, to give NOAA
and law enforcement the tools they need to identify fish stolen
from our waters. I also continue to support better tools and
increased resources for the Coast Guard, including maritime
surveillance platforms at South Padre Island, which I helped
authorize, to strengthen our ability to monitor and stop
illegal fishing and smuggling along our Southern maritime
border.
Globally, we must also confront the threat posed by China's
use of its fishing fleet as part of a maritime militia. Many of
these Chinese vessels exploit crews through forced labor,
unsafe conditions, and wage theft. Crew members are held
against their will, denied basic human rights, and even
subjected to physical violence. This is not competition. It is
barbaric economic warfare.
Let me be clear, our waters are not open to poachers. Texas
and U.S. fishermen deserve a free and fair market for their
seafood. And Americans deserve to know the seafood on their
dinner plate wasn't caught by criminal actors or Mexican
cartels violating U.S. law.
I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses on how we
can strengthen our enforcement, close legal loopholes, and
restore order and accountability to our offshore waters.
Together, we must ensure that American fisheries and American
sovereignty are defended.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And this is the
sign of a hearing that is already producing results. I was very
unaware of the challenges with Mexican IUU fishing, and that is
something that we will focus on in this subcommittee as well.
Now, it is my goal to introduce our witnesses for today.
And I want to begin with recognizing Senator Whitehouse for his
opening remarks on the good bipartisan work that we have all
been doing on IUU fishing.
STATEMENT OF HON. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE,
U.S. SENATOR FROM RHODE ISLAND
Senator Whitehouse. Thanks, Chairman. It is good to be here
with you. It is good work with you on the FISH Act.
Congratulations on getting it successfully through the Commerce
Committee, and I hope we can find a good vehicle like the NDAA
to get it passed into law quickly. You very properly used the
word ``plunder'' about what is happening with the illegal
fishing fleet. You can kind of divide the illegal fishing
behavior in the high seas into two general categories.
One is the pirate fishing fleet, which is just renegades
out there, very often using slave labor, very often not going
into national waters, very often operating with very bad
environmental conditions. And that fleet needs to be regulated,
needs to be reined in, needs to be brought to heel. It is doing
immense damage.
The other is the Chinese fishing fleet, which is doing a
lot more than fishing out there. We believe that they have been
conducting, for instance, intelligence operations and things
like that. Having these fleets out there contributes to other
forms of smuggling, we believe, human smuggling, arms
smuggling, drug smuggling.
When you open up this vector of illegal behavior, then
other lawbreakers will find it, and that is another reason for
shutting it down. I think all of us here, whether from Texas,
or Alaska, or Delaware, or Rhode Island have coasts, and it is
important to our fishing communities to stand up to the effect
that all of this pirate and Chinese predatory fishing has on
our fishing markets and on the well-being of our fishing
community.
It is also good to help protect our oceans. We have pelagic
species that have been crashed 90 percent and more in their
population, and illegal fishing is a big contributor to that.
So, for healthy oceans and healthy markets, this is also an
important topic.
And then Chairman Sullivan and I both spent a lot of time
with our friend Senator McCain, and we did a lot traveling, and
I was often the one who brought up the question of fishing as
we traveled around.
And in the Pacific, every place we went together that had a
coast, when we brought up the question of illegal fishing, our
local interlocutors lit up.
It was a big issue for them, particularly with respect to
the often violent behavior of the Chinese fishing fleet and the
Chinese navy vessels that support and defend that aggressive
fishing fleet. When we were in Munich together, you will
remember Senator Sullivan, we had a briefing from the AFRICOM
Commander.
And without provocation by either of us said, oh, you know,
one thing that would really help us would be to be able to
support our allies under my command in Africa to make sure that
they can identify that there is illegal fishing going on in
their waters, identify whose illegal fishing is going on in
their water, and do what they can to try to defend against the
illegal fishing going on in their waters.
That woke up the Navy, because it was an Army General who
was now starting to look at ocean stuff.
Senator Sullivan. Actually, it was a Marine----
Senator Whitehouse. It was a Marine. You are right. Sorry,
you are absolutely right. And so it was----
The Chairman. The Chairman is liable to hold you in
contempt, Senator Whitehouse.
[Laughter.]
Senator Whitehouse. I know. I know. You don't mess with a
Marine ever. And very often, what was also brought up was
China.
So in terms of creating soft power opportunities with our
allies, we have a great opportunity here to help them against
the Chinese fishing fleet, which is deeply annoying to
countries all around the world.
So, thank you for giving me the chance to be here with you,
and I look forward to working with you to get the FISH Act
passed into law. And that is it.
Senator Sullivan. Great. Well, I appreciate you being here.
I appreciate your hard work on these and other issues. Our Save
Our Seas Act bills have been helping clean up the oceans in
America and around the world, and we are working closely now
with President Trump and his team on those bills to implement
them. So a lot of good things happening.
Senator Whitehouse. Forgive me if I have to get over to
Finance now. We have the Treasury Secretary----
Senator Sullivan. No problem. Well, I want to thank you
again, Senator Whitehouse----
Senator Whitehouse. And thank you also to the Chairman of
the Committee and the Ranking Member.
Senator Sullivan. I want to welcome our witnesses now. We
have first Gregory Poling, who is the Director and Senior
Fellow for the Southeast Asia Program and Asia Maritime
Transparency Initiative at CSIS.
So thank you, Mr. Poling. Nathan Rickard, who is a Partner
at Picard Kentz & Rowe. And especially I want a welcome Gabriel
Prout, who is a fellow Alaskan. President of the Alaska Bearing
Sea Crabbers Association. I believe a third generation Alaskan
out of Kodiak Island.
So, Mr. Prout, we are very honored that you are here. I
think you definitely win the award for traveling the furthest
for this important hearing.
And then finally, Dr. Saumweber who is the Director of the
Stevenson Ocean Security Project, CSIS, and Professor of Marine
Studies at the University of Rhode Island. So a constituent of
Senator Whitehouse.
You will each have 5 minutes to deliver an oral statement,
and a longer written statement will be included in the record
if you so desire. So we will start with Mr. Poling.
STATEMENT OF GREGORY B. POLING, DIRECTOR AND SENIOR FELLOW,
SOUTHEAST ASIA PROGRAM AND ASIA MARITIME TRANSPARENCY
INITIATIVE, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Mr. Poling. Thank you very much, Chairman Sullivan and
Ranking Member Blunt Rochester. It is a real honor to testify
today. Before I begin, I should note that my institution, CSIS,
does not take policy positions, so my views are mine alone. I
saved Dr. Saumweber the difficulty of having to say the same
thing as a fellow CSISer. IUU fishing is not just an economic,
or food security, or an environmental issue.
As we have already heard, this is a national security
threat. One that over the last decade, the U.S. and partners
and allies have woken up to. There is the direct cost that
organized criminal networks and illicit networks that engage in
IUU fishing also engage in other forms of illegality. What is
often called fisheries crime. Be that trafficking of drugs,
weapons, people, forced labor and modern-day slavery, money
laundering, tax evasion.
They also indirectly contribute to piracy, as we have seen
in the Gulf of Guinea or Somalia over the last two decades. And
in some cases, even to insurgency and terrorism, as was the
case in the Sri Lankan civil war in the 90s and 2000s. So
vessels that engage in one type of illegal activity do not
generally only engage in that one type of illegal activity.
There is also the indirect threat. IUU fishing undermines
governance and opens states up to coercion. That is
particularly true given the fact that China has the world's
largest distant water fleet and engages in the most IUU fishing
in the world.
I would particularly highlight the effects in the Pacific
Islands. Other than Western Africa, the Pacific islands
probably suffer from the second largest amount of IUU phishing
in the word as a percentage of their total catch.
They are also as if not more reliant on the revenues from
fishing, both their own and the sale of fishing rights to other
states like the U.S. who do follow the rules for things like
the South Pacific Tuna Treaty, as anywhere on Earth. And so,
when you have a Chinese fleet, the largest in the Pacific, also
engaged in the largest amount of IUU, it denies these states
the revenues they need.
It undermines their governance. It takes away livelihoods
and fish protein from their communities. It opens them up to
all kinds of illegality. Also opens them up to potential elite
capture and influence operations as China engages in checkbook
diplomacy across the region. This is not a distant concern for
the United States.
We are a Pacific power, a resident in the region, be it the
State of Hawaii or the territories of Guam, the Commonwealth of
Northern Mariana and American Samoa. We have millions of
Americans who live in the Pacific. Most of our exclusive
economic zone is in the Pacific.
We also have our unique legal and moral obligations to
defend the three freely associated states of Palau, the freely
associated states of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. In
the Pacific, we have seen a now years long effort by Beijing to
increase its role as a blue water navy and global power by
seeking access, military, law enforcement, and dual-use access
across the Pacific Islands.
That has been most successful in the case of the Solomon
Islands, where we saw China sign a landmark security agreement
that now allows both Chinese law enforcement, but also
potentially Chinese navy vessels to access the Solomons in ways
that are not clear. China has also sought similar access in
places like Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, and even Kiribati,
the closest Pacific Island state to Hawaii.
Those have been less successful, but China will not stop
trying. And the more that China, or China's illegal fishing
fleet, whether intentional or not, deprives these small island
states of their number one or number two source of revenue in
most cases, undermining their governance, it opens these states
up more and more to Chinese economic coercion.
It reduces their options, reduces their resilience, makes
elite capture of their businesspeople, their thought leaders,
and even their government officials far more likely, and
therefore increases the long-term challenge of the U.S. who, in
cooperation with our allies, Australia, New Zealand, France,
have been the undisputed resident power in the Pacific since
World War II of this newcomer that threatens our national
security.
I would highlight three areas that we have significant
resources to confront this. A great deal has already been said
about the Coast Guard. The U.S. has been the top partner for
the Pacific Islands recently, along with Australia, in patrol
interdiction and domain awareness capabilities. We have
shipwright agreements for the Coast Guard with almost every
state in the region.
We have the Navy doing the same through the Ocean and
Maritime Security Initiative. But these are vast waters, and
the number one need of the Pacific Islands is better maritime
domain awareness. That will not be accomplished using just
crude vessels on the water. It is too much space to cover, and
it is too expensive.
They need more low-earth orbit, and they need more uncrewed
platforms, particularly through things like the Quad's Indo-
Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, which has
been very slow to roll out in the Pacific. Second, we have the
diplomatic and legal angle.
China just a month and a half ago finally acceded to the
Port State Measures Agreement. I don't think anybody actually
believes that China is going to enforce the rules of the PSMA,
particularly for Chinese flagged vessels who are bringing
illegal catch back to China. But it gives the U.S. a great tool
to name and shame Beijing and try to hold its feet to the fire
internationally.
And finally, we need to exercise the market power. The U.S.
is one of the largest seafood consumer markets in the world,
particularly for imports, and American consumers would much
rather eat sustainably and legally caught seafood, but they
need to be empowered to know the difference.
And as a native Baltimorean, Ranking Member, I greatly
appreciate you pointing out that even in our region, it is
almost impossible to know where our seafood comes from. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Poling follows:]
Prepared Statement of Gregory B. Poling, Senior Fellow and Director,
Southeast Asia Program and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative,
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member Blunt Rochester, distinguished
Members of the Subcommittee, I am honored to share my views with you on
the topic of illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing as a
national security threat. CSIS does not take policy positions, so the
views represented in this testimony are my own and not those of my
employer. In my testimony, I would like to reflect on the direct and
indirect ways in which IUU fishing undermines national security, the
scale of IUU--particularly by Chinese-owned vessels--in the Pacific,
and the resources the U.S. has to confront this challenge.
IUU fishing is most often treated as an economic and environmental
challenge but it is also an underappreciated nontraditional security
threat. IUU fishing affects national security in two ways. First, it
directly supports illicit networks engaged in the trafficking of
narcotics, weapons, wildlife, and people, along with other maritime
crimes. Second, IUU fishing deprives coastal and small island
developing state governments of desperately needed revenue while
undermining local livelihoods and food security. This combination
creates more fertile recruiting grounds for piracy, organized crime,
armed insurgency, and terrorism, and increases vulnerability to
economic coercion and elite capture by depriving officials of viable
economic alternatives. This is a particular concern in the Pacific,
where China seeks to use economic leverage to increase access and
affect local decisionmaking.
Support for Illicit Networks
IUU fishing supports, both directly and indirectly, non-state
actors engaged in organized crime, piracy, and armed insurgency and
terrorism. It has become a part of the portfolio of illegal criminal
organizations, directly and indirectly supporting their other illicit
activities. Since 2009, the UN General Assembly has expressed ``concern
about possible connections between transnational organized crime and
illegal fishing.'' \1\ This linkage between IUU fishing and other
criminal activities has given rise over the last decade to the concept
of ``fisheries crime,'' or illegal fishing combined with ``crimes such
as tax evasion, human rights abuse, including human trafficking, drug,
wildlife, diamond and arms smuggling, fraud and pollution.'' \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ UN General Assembly, Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly
on 4 December 2009, A/RES/64/72, 19 March 2010, para 61.
\2\ Stop Illegal Fishing, ``FISH-i Africa,'' 13, cited in Cathy
Haenlein, Below the Surface: How Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated
Fishing Threatens Our Security (London: Royal United Services
Institute, 2017), 14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nearly a decade ago, Cathy Haenlein of the Royal United Services
Institute explained the inevitability of illicit actors becoming more
involved in IUU fishing:
As demand increases and supplies dwindle, the corresponding
rise in profits explains a further set of drivers . . . Indeed,
the vastness of the high seas and law-enforcement capacity mean
that the chances of being apprehended are low, while fish can
be laundered easily into legitimate catches. Even where
enforcement is effective, penalties are small . . . The result
is a low-risk, high-reward environment perfectly tailored to
the interests of criminal actors.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Haenlein, Below the Surface, 8.
One of the most infamous examples comes from 2016, when Italian
authorities arrested a crime boss known as ``Fish King'' Franco Muto
and 56 others for organized crime. Muto controlled most of the fishing
vessels along Italy's Tyrrhenian coast but also engaged in drug
trafficking, extortion, and robbery. And in 2014, TRAFFIC International
alleged that coastal South Africa had ``transformed from a network of
small fishing communities, [t]o outposts of international organized
crime battling for the opportunity to harvest and export abalone,''
which in many cases local gangs traded to Chinese triads for drugs,
guns, and other contraband.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Kimon De Greef and Serge Raemaekers, South Africa's Illicit
Abalone Trade: An Updated Overview and Knowledge Gap Analysis
(Cambridge: TRAFFIC International, 2014), cited in Haenlein, Below the
Surface, 28.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The connection between IUU fishing and human trafficking has been
widely documented and, while reliable statistics are impossible to come
by, the scale of the problem is clearly enormous. Modern slavery is
pervasive and hard to combat among IUU fishing fleets because many
vessels stay out at sea for months, illegally transferring catches
without ever entering a port to avoid scrutiny, hide the source of
their catches, and keep crews in often-brutal conditions without any
hope of escape.\5\ The Thai fishing industry became the poster child
for modern-day slavery in 2015 when the AP undertook a series of
investigations into the Thai fishing industry, which earned the paper
the Pulitzer Prize. The AP documented how Thai fishing vessels relied
upon migrants from neighboring Southeast Asian states tricked on board
with promises of productive employment and then kept in modern day
slavery.\6\ The outcry from the AP investigations led to the eventual
release of more than 2,000 slaves.\7\ The United States and European
Union threatened sanctions against imports of Thai seafood unless
authorities acted to crack down on human traffickers and better
regulate the fishing industry, which proved a successful intervention
as Bangkok has vastly improved oversight of its fishing industry and
cracked down on abuses over the last decade, though plenty of work
remains to be done. Unfortunately the problem remains pervasive among
global fleets, and especially China's distant water fishing vessels, as
evidenced by Customs and Border Protection's recent banning of the Zhen
Fa 7 from U.S. ports for forced labor abuses after a years-long
investigation by Ian Urbina's Outlaw Ocean.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Haenlein, Below the Surface, 26.
\6\ Robin McDowell, Margie Mason, and Martha Mendoza, ``AP
Investigation: Slaves May Have Caught the Fish You Bought,'' AP, March
25, 2015, https://www.ap.org/explore/seafood-from-slaves/ap-
investigation-slaves-may-have-caught-the-fish-you-bought.html.
\7\ Haenlein, Below the Surface, 26.
\8\ Ian Urbina and Austin Brush, ``Federal Authorities Take Action
on China's Fishing Fleet,'' Outlaw Ocean, May 29, 2025.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
IUU fishing vessels also play a significant role in other forms of
trafficking, particularly of drugs. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) and the U.S. Justice Department have documented numerous cases
of illicit fishing ships involved in trafficking cocaine from South
American to the United States, as well as heroine and cannabis.\9\ In
addition to organized crime, trafficking, and modern slavery, IUU
fishing has been used to support insurgent and terrorist groups. For
example, during the Sri Lankan civil war in the 1990s and 2000s, the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which the U.S. government labeled a
terrorist organization, used IUU fishermen who were already adept at
avoiding the authorities to smuggle contraband through Indian and Sri
Lankan waters.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ UNODC, Transnational Organized Crime, cited in Haenlein, Below
the Surface, 27.
\10\ U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), ``Global
Implications of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing,''
September 19, 2016, 14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Undermining Governance; Facilitating Threats
IUU fishing deprives governments in coastal and small island
developing states of funds needed for social services, infrastructure,
and other necessary spending.\11\ At the same time, it undercuts local
livelihoods leading to economic displacement and desperation. The
combination of these two effects directly undermines stability and
security, and indirectly contributes to the spread of threats from non-
state actors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Haenlein, Below the Surface, 36.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tens of millions of people work in the fishing industry worldwide,
mostly in developing Asia and Africa, and more than 1 billion people,
clustered disproportionately in coastal regions, rely on fish as their
primary source of animal protein. Communities that have traditionally
relied on the fishing industry often have few options to replace their
damaged livelihoods, leading to the kind of desperation on which
pirates, criminal gangs, terrorist groups, and other nefarious non-
state actors thrive.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ NIC, ``Global Implications of IUU Fishing,'' 9, 12, 14-15.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
An academic study of 2,600 piracy incidents reported to the
International Maritime Bureau between 2004 and 2013 found that ``states
with reduced values of fisheries production are more likely to
experience piracy,'' suggesting that ``changes in labor opportunities
in the fishing section--driven primarily by overfishing--increases the
number of potential pirate recruits.'' \13\ For example, a surge in
illegal fishing by Chinese trawlers in the Gulf of Guinea since 2008
has made it difficult for local fishermen to make a living. Attacks on
fishing boats, tankers, and cargo ships in the gulf soared in the 2010s
and remain a persistent problem.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Ibid, 16.
\14\ Ibid, 16-17.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some studies have also suggested a more direct, and ironic, link
between IUU fishing and piracy in the case of Somalia. According to a
2016 report from the U.S. National Intelligence Council,
IUU fishing also contributed to the increase in piracy off
Somalia in the 2000s because many Somali fishers, who had
learned to seize vessels in order to prevent illegal fishing in
their historic fisheries transferred these initially defensive
skills to piracy, according to scholars. As Somali fishers'
incomes decreased as stocks diminished, they applied their
newfound ship-seizing skills to piracy.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Ibid, 17.
The Pacific Islands region is likely second only to West Africa in
the proportion of seafood catch via IUU fishing, and this is driven
almost entirely by distant water fleets. China is the predominant
distant water fishing actor both globally and in the region, and is the
worst offender for IUU fishing according to the Global Illegal Fishing
Index. IUU fishing by Chinese vessels and to a lesser degree those of
other states primarily take the form of illegal transshipment of catch.
Transshipment vessels are large, refrigerated motherships which operate
under flags of convenience and through which smaller vessels offload
their catch to be shipped into port. Transshipment vessels are highly
associated with IUU fishing, and provide an opportunity to bypass
international and Federal fisheries management, import, and trade
regulations. Transshipment is in most cases prohibited by the
management guidelines of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries
Commission (WCPFC), which covers the exclusive economic zones (EEZs)
and high seas of the Pacific Islands, focused primarily on the
lucrative tuna fisheries. Nevertheless, utilization of transshipment
vessels via loopholes in the WCPFC rules has become the de facto method
of distant water fleets landing their fish catch in the Pacific, as
this allows the fish to be shipped into ports of convenience which have
less regulatory and enforcement capabilities to comply with domestic
and international law.
All transshipment vessels operating in the WCPFC area must be
registered with the commission and report each time they take on catch
from another vessel. But research by Pew has shown that far more
transshipment occurs than is reported to the commission.\16\ This is
particularly true in the high seas pockets between EEZs. These
transshipment hotspots are vast and under the rules of the WCPFC
responsibility for monitoring and enforcement within them is divided up
among the neighboring small island states, which have little hope of
enforcing the law within them. IUU fishing destabilizes the region,
both in terms of sustainability and security. Many of these islands
rely on their fisheries as a primary source of protein, therefore IUU
fishing in these regions jeopardizes their fisheries management and
food security.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ Pew Charitable Trusts, ``Transshipment in the Western and
Central Pacific,'' September 12, 2019, https://www.pew.org/en/research-
and-analysis/issue-briefs/2019/09/report-finds-transshipments-in-
western-and-central-pacific-likely-underreported.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The small-islands states of the Pacific are more reliant on well-
regulated fishing than anywhere else on earth. For most, with the
exceptions of Papua New Guinea and Fiji, local economies and government
revenue rely overwhelmingly on tourism (including ocean tourism) and
fishing or the sale of fishings rights to distant water fleets.
Communities rely on fish catch for a huge proportion of animal protein.
And Pacific Island governments view IUU fishing and fisheries crime as
the second most important national security challenge they face,
trailing but interconnected with climate change. This was codified in
the 2018 Boe Declaration, in which the leaders of all Pacific Island
states included human security, environmental and resource security,
and transnational crime as top priorities.
The United States is a resident power in the Pacific Islands--the
state of Hawaii and the territories of Guam, American Samoa, and the
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are home to millions of
American citizens. Most of the U.S. EEZ and continental shelf are in
the Pacific, including areas bordering on the WCPFC waters being
pillaged by overfishing. The United States is a party to the South
Pacific Tuna Treaty which was just renewed last year with the Pacific
Island Forum Fisheries Agency, and the U.S. fleet follows the rules
therein. The United States also has a unique and legally binding
commitment to the defense of the three freely associated states of
Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia.
The other major resident powers of the Pacific Islands--Australia, New
Zealand, and France--are U.S. treaty allies, as is Japan, traditionally
a major external partner and donor.
China, by contrast, is a newcomer in the Pacific Islands. It has
growing leverage thanks to its checkbook diplomacy and has used that
for political ends, including peeling away several of Taiwan's
remaining diplomatic allies in recent years (the Solomon Islands,
Kiribati, and Nauru), and to seek logistical access as it builds out a
blue water navy. The most worrying example of the latter is the
Solomons, where a 2023 security agreement gives Chinese law enforcement
and potentially military vessels access to the country's land and
waters. China has also tried, so far unsuccessfully, to secure access
to military or dual-use infrastructure in Papua New Guinea, Fiji,
Vanuatu, and reportedly Kiribati, which approaches closest to Hawaii
and in which foreign military access should be constrained by the 1979
U.S.-Kiribati Treaty of Tarawa. In each of these cases, China relies in
part on elite capture, using economic inducements to leverage local
government, business, and thought leaders to fulfill Beijing's wishes.
This is effective in the Pacific Islands because of the severe resource
constraints facing regional governments and societies; resource
constraints that are made worse by the significant IUU fishing,
primarily by Chinese-owned vessels, across the region.
U.S. Tools to Meet the Challenge
The United States is not without considerable resources to confront
the challenge of IUU fishing, especially in the Pacific. Three types of
U.S. tools are of particular importance: military/law enforcement,
diplomatic, and commercial.
The United States has the most advanced naval and coast guard
capabilities in the world and has leveraged them particularly well in
partnership with Pacific Island states. This is an enormous comparative
advantage for the United States in the strategic competition with
China. By supporting maritime domain awareness (MDA) and patrol
capabilities in the region, the United States presents itself as a
partner in what regional states have identified as one of their top
national security challenges, and it allows those states to identify
the bad actor, which tend to be Chinese vessels, thereby undermining
trust in Beijing.
The U.S. has negotiated ship rider agreements with nearly every
state in the region, allowing the U.S. Coast Guard to assist with
fisheries patrols and interdiction by putting local law enforcement
officers aboard USCG vessels on patrol. The Navy has also leveraged its
assets through the Oceania Maritime Security Initiative, by which Navy
vessels transiting the Pacific also take on shipriders and engage in
fisheries patrol. And the United States has over the last decade
invested considerably in the capacity of local partners through efforts
like provision of the U.S. Navy/Department of Transportation's
SeaVision platform for maritime domain awareness (MDA) and the
deployment of U.S. MDA experts to Fiji and Papua New Guinea to assist
local officials. The deployment of USCG national security cutters to
Guam is further enhancing U.S. capabilities both within its own EEZ and
those of its partners. But there is more that can be done. In
particular, the effort to work with Australia, Japan, and India to
provide more space-based MDA capabilities through the Indo-Pacific
Partnership on Maritime Domain Awareness has so far produced little
results in the Pacific Islands.
On the diplomatic front, the United States has been a champion of
global efforts to combat IUU fishing, including by being an early
adopter of the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) and launching the
annual Our Oceans Conference. PSMA has been particularly important as
the only global treaty specifically targeting IUU fishing, and today it
has more than 100 party states (the European Union having acceded on
behalf of all its members). The treaty reached a major milestone in
April when China finally became a party. But there is reason to be
skeptical that Beijing will fully implement the terms of the treaty.
PSMA is mainly seen as a way to prevent foreign vessels from offloading
illegally caught fish in port, but China's ports almost exclusively
offtake fish from Chinese-flagged vessels, including much of its
distant water fleet. PSMA does include provisions requiring flag states
to investigate and punish their own vessels suspected of engaging in
IUU.\17\ But China has not been proactive in enforcing its flag-state
obligations, as evidenced by that fact that it still operates the
largest IUU fleet in the world. The United States and partners should
leverage Beijing's entry into PSMA to ratchet up the diplomatic
pressure on China to get its own house in order.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Elaine Young, ``China Joins Treaty to Fight Illegal Fishing, a
Major Milestone for Ocean Governance,'' Pew, April 17, 2025, https://
www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2025/04/17/china-joins-
treaty-to-fight-illegal-fishing-a-major-milestone-for-ocean-governance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commercially, the United States has power courtesy of its vast
market. U.S. consumers account for a significant portion of global
consumption and that gives the United States leverage to set terms in
the global seafood market. U.S. consumers would much rather purchase
sustainably and legally caught seafood, but must be empowered to do so
through clear tracing and labelling. This was the impetus for the
Seafood Import Monitoring Program. And though that program has been
criticized as ineffective, it can be built upon to ensure that U.S.
consumers know what lands on their plates. Removing the profit motive
from IUU fishing is ultimately the only way to solve the problem and
secure U.S. economic and national security interests.
Senator Sullivan. Great. Excellent testimony. Mr. Poling, I
really appreciate it. Mr. Rickard, please.
STATEMENT OF NATHANIEL MAANDIG RICKARD, CO-MANAGING PARTNER,
PICARD KENTZ & ROWE LLP
Mr. Rickard. Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, thank you for
inviting me to participate in this hearing. I am Nathaniel
Rickard, Co-Managing Partner of the law firm Picard Kentz &
Rowe, and I have worked on international trade issues with the
U.S. commercial fishing industry for over 20 years.
Four years ago, the U.S. International Trade Commission
investigated the economic impact of IUU seafood on U.S.
commercial fisheries, estimating that roughly 11 percent of the
value of all seafood imported into the United States was IUU
seafood. In light of their significance, the agency concluded
that the elimination of IUU imports ``would have a positive
effect on U.S. commercial fishers, with estimated increases in
U.S. prices, landings, and operating income for all species.''
The ITC estimated that prohibiting IUU imports would
increase the fishing industry's operating income by nearly $61
million annually, benefiting a broad range of segments. The
shrimp industry, largely operating in the Gulf and South
Atlantic, would see a $13 million a year boost. The salmon
industry on the West Coast and in Alaska would see income grow
by $12 million a year.
Blue crab watermen in the mid-Atlantic and Gulf would
receive another $6 million a year, while lobstermen in the
Northeast would see $4 million annual increase. Our commercial
fishermen need all the help they can get. On Sunday, to
commemorate World Oceans Day, The USTR observed that over 90
percent of the seafood Americans consume comes from overseas.
The USTR also explained that ``tens of billions of dollars
are estimated to be lost annually from IUU fishing, with U.S.
industry bearing a significant portion of that loss.'' This has
resulted in the deterioration of America's maritime industry,
while those in other countries, particularly China, have
massively expanded.
Applying the ITC's estimate to current circumstances, we
would have imported roughly $2.7 billion worth of IUU seafood
last year. That is over half the total value of all U.S.
commercial seafood landings. This level of imports has
devastated some of our commercial fishing sectors.
The Gulf and South Atlantic shrimp industry, for example,
saw the value of its harvest cut in half between 2021 and 2023,
losing over $250 million in value on close to the same catch
volume. And it is not just coastal communities. American
catfish growers experienced a 21 percent reduction in their
sales value last year, losing nearly $100 million in revenue.
As with coastal fishermen, catfish farmers in Arkansas are
being driven out of business by illegal seafood imports. And it
is not just U.S. seafood producers. Americans should be eating
more fish.
The per-pound value of U.S. commercial landings and U.S.
seafood imports have both declined significantly over the past
few years. But the volume of domestic landings and imports have
also fallen. This means that in a time characterized by
significant inflation, the cost of seafood is going the other
way, and yet Americans are consuming less seafood.
It is reasonable to conclude that Americans' demand for
seafood has been harmed by consumer concerns as to how fish in
our market has gotten from hook or net to plate. Although
Americans can comfortably assume that if they purchase U.S.
wild caught or farmed raised seafood, it has been produced in
an ethical and sustainable manner, what can any consumer really
know about fish harvested by a foreign distant water fishing
fleet?
Foreign seafood supply chains are opaque and non-
transparent. In my private practice, we worked to stop trading
networks through which Chinese farm raised shrimp was
transshipped, given a false designation of origin, and then
imported into the United States.
Over time, we documented how seafood products associated
with increased risk, such as chum salmon or Alaska pollock,
would be run through supply chains designed to limit disruption
in the event that any Trojan horse exporter or paper importer
fell under scrutiny. Still today, a quick review of shipment
information confirms the continued operation of these networks,
facilitating the large volume of IUU seafood believed to be in
our market. There are things that can and should be done.
For example, the FISH Act of 2025 would meaningfully
improve the market position of our domestic seafood producers,
it would effectively counter important practices in foreign
fisheries, and it would restore American consumer confidence in
the seafood sold in our market.
The FISH Act does so by prohibiting the importation of any
seafood caught, processed, or transported by foreign vessels on
the IUU vessel list, and by requiring that CBP develop a
strategy to identify imports of seafood harvested using forced
labor. In furtherance to the latter objective, the FISH Act
appropriately recognizes the central importance of data
collection, data sharing, and data analysis to ensure that IUU
seafood is kept out of the U.S. market.
President Trump's April Executive Order on seafood
competitors reinforced the vital nature of the domestic seafood
producers to the American economy, declaring that ``the United
States should be the world's dominant seafood leader.'' And
``the erosion of American seafood competitiveness at the hands
of unfair foreign trade practices must end.''
I believe that the FISH Act advances those twin goals and
appreciate the opportunity to speak in support of this
legislation. Thanks. I look forward to any questions that you
have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rickard follows:]
Prepared Statement of Nathaniel Maandig Rickard, Co-Managing Partner,
Picard Kentz & Rowe LLP
Mister Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to participate in this hearing. I am Nathaniel Rickard, co-
managing partner of the law firm of Picard Kentz & Rowe LLP.
I have worked with the U.S. commercial fishing industry on
international trade issues for over twenty years and I appreciate the
opportunity to describe how illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU)
fishing adversely impacts Americans.
Four years ago, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC)
issued a report of its investigation on the economic impact of imports
of IUU seafood on U.S. commercial fisheries. Using 2019 import figures,
the ITC estimated that 10.7 percent of the value of all seafood
imported into the United States was from IUU seafood, totaling roughly
$2.4 billion.\1\ Based on the significance of IUU seafood imports and
how they competed for sales in the U.S. market, the ITC concluded that
the elimination of these imports from our market ``would have a
positive effect on U.S. commercial fishers, with estimated increases in
U.S. prices, landings. . ., and operating income for all species. . .''
\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See U.S. International Trade Commission, Seafood Obtained via
Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing: U.S. Imports and Economic
Impact on U.S. Commercial Fisheries, Inv. No. 332-575, USITC Pub. 5168
(Feb. 2021) at 79.
\2\ Id. at 11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At base, the Federal agency found that removing IUU seafood imports
would increase the total annual operating income of the U.S. commercial
fishing and seafood processing industry as a whole by nearly $61
million. These benefits were not concentrated in any particular fishing
industry or region of the United States.
The shrimp industry, largely operating in the Gulf and South
Atlantic, would see a $13 million a year boost. The salmon industry on
the west coast and in Alaska would see income grow by $12 million each
year. The American tuna industry operating in the Pacific would gain
another $8.5 million annually. Watermen in the blue crab industry in
the mid-Atlantic and Gulf would receive another $5.6 million in yearly
revenue. And lobstermen in the northeast would have another $4.1
million injected into their fishery each year.
The table below summarizes the ITC's estimate of the specific
economic benefit to a wide range of U.S. commercial fishing and seafood
processing industries that would result from the removal of IUU seafood
imports from the U.S. market.
Eliminating IUU Seafood Imports Would Increase the Commercial Fishing
and Seafood Processing Industry's Operating Income by $60 Million
Annually
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimated Increase in Annual
U.S. Commercial Fishing Sector Operating Income\3\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shrimp $13,149,400
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salmon (farmed & wild-caught) $11,831,700
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuna $8,482,000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blue crab (swimming crab) $5,630,000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Squid & Octopus $4,127,500
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lobster (warm-and cold-water) $4,115,400
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reef fish (Grouper & Red Snapper) $3,709,500
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cod & Pollock $2,755,200
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sardines, Herring, Anchovies, & $2,464,900
Mackerel
------------------------------------------------------------------------
King crab & Snow crab $1,794,700
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mahi Mahi $1,746,700
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Swordfish $838,700
------------------------------------------------------------------------
An additional $60 million a year in income would be significant for
the thousands of small, family-owned businesses that comprise our
domestic commercial fisheries. But it is also important in the context
of the existential threat commercial fishermen are facing from import
competition.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ See id. at 290-318.
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On Sunday, to commemorate World Oceans Day, the United States Trade
Representative (USTR) noted that over 90 percent of the seafood
consumed in this market is imported and that our trade deficit in
seafood products has now reached $20 billion a year.\4\ The USTR
observed that ``[t]ens of billions of dollars are estimated to be lost
annually from [IUU] fishing, with U.S. industry bearing a significant
portion of that loss.'' \5\ In result, the USTR described how America's
maritime industry has been deteriorating while those in other
countries, particularly China, have massively expanded.\6\
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\4\ See https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1931033156347384221.
\5\ See https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1931809450253291921.
\6\ See https://x.com/USTradeRep/status/1931033156347384221.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The USTR's comments are fully supported by trade data.
In 2017, the American commercial fishing industry harvested 4.5
million metric tons of seafood with a landed value of $5.8 billion. In
2023, the volume of the industry's harvest fell 15 percent to 3.9
million metric tons, while the value of those landings fell by 12
percent to $5.1 billion. As shown in the table below, although the
value of commercial landings is above what the industry experienced in
2020, over $1.4 billion has disappeared from the sector since 2021.
Over the same time period, seafood imports have grown at close to
the same pace as U.S. commercial seafood landings have declined. In
2017, the United States imported roughly 2.6 billion pounds of seafood
worth $21.4 billion. By 2023, the volume of our seafood imports had
grown by 9.4 percent in volume to 2.8 billion pounds and by 16.6
percent in value to $25.0 billion.
The increased volume of seafood imports has had a devastating
impact on some domestic commercial fisheries. The commercial shrimp
industry in the Gulf and South Atlantic, for example, saw the value of
its harvest cut in half between 2021 and 2023, dropping from $521.8
million to $268.7 million, while the volume of its landings declined by
just 7.4 percent over the same time period.
The scope of illegally-traded IUU seafood imports is clearly
significant. Using the ITC's estimate, we would have imported
approximately $2.7 billion worth of IUU seafood last year. That is over
half the total value of all U.S. commercial seafood landings.
Moreover, the economic harm caused by this massive amount of
illegal seafood imports is not only felt in coastal communities. The
United States also has significant aquaculture operations in ponds and
tanks located far away from our oceans and these food producers have
also been adversely impacted by illegal imports. For example, U.S.
catfish growers had $358 million in sales last year, down 21 percent
from their $454 million in sales in 2023.\7\ Since 2017, the total
acreage in the United States used for growing catfish has fallen by
14.3 percent, from 60.8 thousand acres on January 1, 2017 to 52.1
thousand acres on January 1, 2025.\8\ As with their commercial fishing
brethren on the coastline, catfish farmers in Arkansas believe that
illegal seafood imports are driving them out of business and pushing
domestically-raised catfish out of the marketplace.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ See U.S. Department of Agriculture, Catfish Production, ISSN:
1948-271X (Feb. 10, 2025).
\8\ Compare id. with U.S. Department of Agriculture, Catfish
Production, ISSN: 1948-271X (Feb. 2, 2018).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this respect, American seafood producers throughout the country
have enthusiastically welcomed the Restoring American Seafood
Competitiveness Executive Order, which declares it to be the policy of
the United States to ``combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated
(IUU) fishing; and protect our seafood markets from the unfair trade
practices of foreign nations.'' \9\ As the Executive Order recognizes,
the presence of IUU seafood in the global market constitutes an unfair
trade practice that has inappropriately curbed domestic seafood
production.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ See Executive Order 14276 of April 17, 2025, Restoring American
Seafood Competitiveness, 90 Fed. Reg. 16,993 (Presidential Documents
Apr. 22, 2025).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
But the harm from IUU seafood is not limited to U.S. seafood
producers. Americans should be eating more fish. The Scientific Report
of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee appropriately
emphasizes how much more seafood Americans should be consuming in order
to promote a healthy lifestyle.\10\ Nevertheless, one of the more
stunning things about the U.S. seafood market right now is that the
average per unit value of seafood is falling dramatically at the same
time as apparent consumption is declining. The value of U.S. commercial
landings fell by nearly 22 percent between 2021 and 2023, while the
volume of those landings dropped by less than one percent. The value of
U.S. seafood imports fell by 16 percent between 2022 and 2024, while
the volume of these imports fell by 6 percent over the same timeframe.
In other words, as shown in the table below, in a time characterized by
significant inflation, the cost of seafood is declining and, yet,
Americans are consuming less seafood.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ See generally U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Scientific Report of the 2025
Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Advisory Report to the Secretary
of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Agriculture (Dec.
2024).
There are many possible explanations for this phenomenon. However,
because imports comprise over 90 percent of the volume of seafood
consumed annually in the United States,\11\ imports must play a central
role in any explanation offered.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ See NOAA Fisheries, Improving International Fisheries
Management: 2019 Report to Congress (Sept. 2019) at 41, 47, and 65
(observing that the U.S. market plays a substantial role in the
international trade of seafood, as it represents the second largest
seafood import market in the world, and seafood imports ``currently
represent[] approximately 90 percent of U.S. seafood supplies. . .'');
NOAA Fisheries, Report on the Implementation of the U.S. Seafood Import
Monitoring Program (Apr. 2021) at 4-5 (``the United States imports more
than 85 percent of its seafood. . .''); and Government Accountability
Office, Food Safety: FDA Should Strengthen Inspection Efforts to
Protect the U.S. Food Supply, GAO-25-107571 (Jan. 8, 2025) p. 21 n.3
(noting that the FDA estimates that 94 percent of the seafood Americans
consume annually is imported).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the context of our existing seafood market, it is reasonable to
conclude that American demand for seafood has been harmed by consumer
concerns as to how the fish offered for sale has gotten from hook or
net to plate. Americans can comfortably assume that if they purchase
U.S. wild-caught or farm-raised seafood it has been produced with the
oversight of our large, expansive, and complicated regulatory system.
This means that environmental harms are mitigated and that workers have
rights in line with all other American industries.
But what can any consumer really know about fish harvested by a
foreign distant water fishing fleet? What confidence can any American
have that the fishermen aboard those vessels are not toiling under
inhuman conditions, that the boats are not decimating the environment,
or that the workers in the foreign seafood processing plant are not
being subjected to forced labor?
To the extent this may be on consumers' minds, I believe that there
is valid reason to be concerned. In my private practice, I spent nearly
a decade working to shut down trading networks through which Chinese
farm-raised shrimp was transshipped through other countries, given a
false designation of origin, and then imported into the United States.
This usually involved foreign companies that would suddenly ship large
quantities of shrimp to the United States to a consignee with a limited
range of imported products. Some of these consignees would import just
frozen shrimp and honey or just frozen shrimp and canned mushrooms or,
at its most absurd, frozen shrimp and wooden bedroom furniture. Others
would specialize in a limited set of seafood products, encompassing
frozen shrimp, chum salmon, and pollock. Over time, we were able to
document how importers would isolate seafood products associated with
increased risk and run these through designed, specialized networks
intended to limit disruptions to their business in the event that any
one of its trojan horse exporters or paper importers come under
scrutiny. Still today, a review of bill of lading information confirms
that seafood continues to enter the United States through these opaque
networks, facilitating the large volume of IUU seafood believed to be
in our market.
For these reasons, the Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood Harvests
Act of 2025 represents a crucial opportunity to improve the market
position of our domestic seafood producers, effectively counter
abhorrent practices in foreign fisheries, and restore American consumer
confidence in the seafood offered for sale in our market. Of particular
importance is the FISH Act's prohibition of the importation of any
seafood caught, processed, or transported by foreign vessels on the IUU
vessel list and the requirement that U.S. Customs and Border Protection
develop a strategy to identify imports of seafood harvested on foreign
vessels using forced labor.
In furtherance of the latter objective, the FISH Act appropriately
recognizes the central importance of data collection, data sharing, and
data analysis in ensuring that IUU seafood, including seafood produced
through forced labor, is kept out of the United States market.
Traceability information is essential for distinguishing between
legitimately harvested foreign seafood and illegal imports and thereby
avoiding the imposition of additional burdens on imported seafood not
harvested through IUU fishing. Similarly, the FISH Act's call for a
study of the costs to the United States and global economy of IUU
fishing, including the use of forced labor, will provide a necessary
update to the ITC's Section 332 investigation and create a baseline by
which interventions to counter IUU fishing may be evaluated.
President Trump's April Executive Order on seafood competitiveness
reinforced the vital nature of domestic seafood producers to the
American economy. As the Executive Order correctly observes, ``[t]he
United States should be the world's dominant seafood leader'' and
``[t]he erosion of American seafood competitiveness at the hands of
unfair foreign trade practices must end.'' I believe that the FISH Act
advances those twin goals and appreciate the opportunity to speak in
support of this legislation.
Thank you for inviting me to share my experience here today and I
look forward to answering questions.
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Sullivan. Great. Thank you very much for that
testimony. Mr. Prout.
STATEMENT OF GABRIEL PROUT, PRESIDENT,
ALASKA BERING SEA CRABBERS
Mr. Prout. Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member Blunt
Rochester, and distinguished members of the Subcommittee, thank
you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss the
devastating impact of IUU, illegal, unreported, and unregulated
crab fishing, and unfair Russian and Chinese trade practices on
American crab fishermen and coastal communities.
I would like to first start by acknowledging and thanking
Senator Sullivan, as well as Senator Cantwell, for their
longstanding support of independent crab harvesters like
myself. Thank you. My name is Gabriel Prout, and I am the
President of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. I represent the
majority of quota and vessel owners harvesting king, snow and
barrette crab in the Bering sea.
I am also a third generation commercial fisherman and a
vessel owner from Kodiak, Alaska, a seafood powerhouse where
hundreds of millions of pounds of product cross the docks each
year. For nearly 20 years, I have worked in the Bering Sea in
the Gulf of Alaska with two of my brothers, continuing a
livelihood passed down from our father and grandfather.
In recent years, the collapse of the snow crab and red king
crab stocks hit us hard. Boats sat tied up, crews were out of
work, and families like mine faced deep uncertainty. This
fishery isn't just our livelihood, it is our identity. Crab
stocks now appear to be rebounding, but we still need action to
protect small fishing families like mine, especially from the
harms of IUU fishing.
For over 20 years, Russian IUU crab has undercut the
economic foundation of our industry. In 2021, a U.S.
International Trade Commission report found that in 2019, over
20 percent of U.S. imports of snow and king crab from the
Russian Far East came from IUU sources.
Fortunately, U.S. imports of Russian crab have largely
ceased thanks to the embargo that began under President Biden,
continued under President Trump, and was strengthened by
Senator Sullivan's work to close the China trans-shipment
loophole. Still, Russia's IUU crab continues entering global
markets through other channels, suppressing prices, and
creating unfair competition for U.S. harvesters who follow the
law.
Russia's actions extend far beyond IUU. The following are
just a few key points. It has heavily subsidized its seafood
industry to deliberately undercut U.S. competitors. Flooded
international markets with underpriced seafood following its
2022 invasion of Ukraine to help fund its war.
And contributed to an estimated $1.8 billion in losses for
the Alaska seafood industry during 2022 and 2023. There are
also national security concerns. Russian crab is being funneled
into the global market through North Korean smuggling networks
where it is reprocessed and relabeled in China.
This collaboration between two sanctioned regimes
undermines trade restrictions and raises serious concerns about
enforcement and the global seafood supply chain integrity.
Based on years of experience witnessing the impact of Russian
IUU on Alaskan crabbers, I respectfully urge the following
actions.
One, expand the seafood import monitoring program and
ensure it focuses on species at highest risk for IUU fishing.
Mandate country of origin labeling, also known as cool
labeling, that also applies to cooked crab products.
Two, expand economic sanctions and trade restrictions,
which would extend and strengthen sanctions on Russian origin
seafood, and ensure enforcement on the ban of Russian seafood
entering through third countries, especially China.
Expand intelligence sharing agreements with allies. This is
under point three. Increase international cooperation and
enforcement. Increase support for international bodies working
to combat IUU fishing, and push for stronger enforcement of
port state measure agreements, especially with countries still
importing Russian crab around the world.
Four, provide economic relief to affected communities.
Establish emergency relief similar to the Seafood Trade Relief
Program and create low interest loans to help crabbers and
fishing fleets modernize gear and remain competitive throughout
the world. Prioritize support for small, independent, family
owned fishing operations like those that I represent.
And five, strengthen U.S. enforcement against IUU fishing.
Congress should pass Senate Bill 688, the FISH Act, and provide
full funding and direction for the U.S. Coast Guard and NOAA to
expand patrols, inspections, and enforcements targeting IUU
threats. For over two decades, Russian IUU crab has undermined
American fishermen who follow the rules, invest in
sustainability, and support our coastal communities.
This isn't just about statistics. It is about lost
livelihoods, struggling towns, and an industry fighting for
survival. Congress has the opportunity to protect American
harvesters and ensure global seafood is harvested legally and
sustainably.
Thank you for your attention to this critical issue
affecting thousands of American fishing families, and I look
forward to your questions and working with the Committee on
effective solutions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Prout follows:]
Prepared Statement of Gabriel Prout, President,
Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers
Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member Blunt Rochester, and
distinguished members of the Subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss
the devastating impact of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU)
crab fishing and unfair trade practices by Russia on American crab
fishermen and coastal communities. I also want to thank both Senators
Sullivan and Cantwell for their longtime support of independent crab
harvesters. My name is Gabriel Prout, and I am the president of the
Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers (ABSC), representing the majority of the
quota and vessel owners who harvest king, snow, and bairdi crab in the
Bering Sea.
I am also a third-generation commercial fisherman from Kodiak,
Alaska--a seafood powerhouse that is known for the 100s of millions of
pounds of product that come across its docks each year. For nearly two
decades, I have worked in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska alongside
two of my brothers, continuing the livelihood passed down from our
father and grandfather.
In recent years, the collapse of the snow and red king crab stocks
has hit our community hard. Boats sat tied to the dock, crews were out
of work, and families like mine were left facing deep uncertainty. This
fishery is not just our livelihood--it is our identity. Today, I am
happy to report that crab stocks appear to be making a recovery, but
more is still needed to be done to help protect small fishing families
like mine and those that I represent in the Bering Sea crab fleet,
especially when it comes to IUU.
IUU Impact on U.S. Fishermen
The scale of economic losses from IUU fishing on American fishermen
is staggering. U.S. fishermen are losing $1 billion in revenue per year
due to illegal seafood imports. This represents approximately 20
percent of what American fishermen should be earning under fair market
conditions.
For over two decades, Russian IUU crab fishing has undermined the
economic foundation of America's legitimate crab fishing industry. The
economic impact on Alaskan crab fishermen has been enormous. A 2021
report by the U.S. International Trade Commission estimated that in
2019, 20.8 percent of U.S. Imports of both snow and king crab in the
Russian Far East were a product of IUU fishing. Thankfully, due to the
trade embargo which began under President Biden and continued under
President Trump, the U.S. imports of Russian crab has essentially
ceased. This also was made possible by Senator Sullivan's work to close
the loophole that allowed Russian seafood to enter the U.S. through
China.
Despite Port State agreements aimed at curbing illegal fishing that
Russia signed a decade ago with several trading partners, enforcement
has been inconsistent and IUU fishing is still occurring according to
recent media sources inside Russia. Russian fishing operations continue
to impact global markets with illegally harvested crab, suppressing
prices and creating unfair competition for law-abiding American
fishermen who follow strict quotas, safety regulations, and sustainable
fishing practices.
Unfair Trade Practices, Forced Labor, and Market Manipulation
Russia has engaged in systematic unfair trade practices and human
rights abuses that go far beyond traditional IUU fishing. Russia has
significantly increased government subsidies for its seafood industry
as part of a deliberate strategy to undercut American competitors.
These subsidies allow Russian producers to sell seafood below fair
market prices.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia
began to flood the international market with underpriced seafood,
including crab, to help fund its war effort. Fishermen have suffered
amid cratering prices due to Russia flooding markets with artificially
cheap seafood. This is a major contributing factor to unprecedented
challenges faced by the Alaska seafood industry in recent years
including an estimated $1.8 billion in losses in 2022-2023.
According to a 2023 Financial Transparency Coalition report, Russia
also ranked among the top countries with fishing vessels accused of
forced labor. Forced labor in Russian fishing also represents a
significant component of broader human rights abuses and another way in
which the Russian fishing industry engages in IUU fishing.
National Security Concerns
There are numerous national security implications involving
Russia's involvement in IUU fishing. Particularly concerning is the use
of North Korean smuggling networks to launder Russian crab into global
markets. North Korea has extensive experience in sanctions evasion,
including seafood trafficking through China. These established
smuggling routes and networks are now being exploited to move Russian
crab through North Korea to China, where it can be reprocessed and
relabeled as ``product of China'' before entering the global market.
The North Korean connection is particularly troubling because it
involves collaboration between two sanctioned regimes to undermine
trade restrictions. This represents a direct threat to U.S. national
security interests beyond just economic competition.
Russian fisheries also present a significant national security
threat through their dual-use capabilities that blur the lines between
commercial fishing and state-sponsored espionage operations. Recent
actions by a major Russian fishing company exemplifies this threat as
its vessels exhibit suspicious movement patterns inconsistent with
normal fishing activities, instead repeatedly loitering near critical
infrastructure and military installations in the North and Baltic Seas.
These activities are part of a broader Russian surveillance campaign
that weaponizes civilian fishing vessels for espionage missions
targeting both civilian and military infrastructure, potentially
facilitating future sabotage operations. The vessels have been equipped
with specialized technology for intelligence gathering, with at least
one vessel banned from Dutch ports due to espionage concerns.
Recommendations
Based on years of experience witnessing the impact of Russian IUU
fishing on Alaskan crab fishermen, I respectfully urge the following
actions:
1. Strengthen Import Controls and Traceability
The Administration and Congress should mandate comprehensive
seafood traceability systems that track crab products that include:
Enhancing the capabilities of the Seafood Import Monitoring
Program and ensuring that it only apply to the most at-risk
species of IUU fishing.
Enhanced screening for products from known transshipment
routes, particularly those involving China.
Mandatory country-of-origin labeling that applies to cooked
crab and cannot be circumvented by processing in third
countries.
2. Expand Economic Sanctions and Trade Restrictions
The Administration and Congress should expand economic and trade
restrictions on Russian seafood and include:
Continuing the prohibition on all Russian seafood imports,
including those processed through third countries.
Imposing secondary sanctions on entities that facilitate
Russian seafood transshipment schemes.
Imposing Section 301 tariffs on Russian seafood in the event
that the Russian seafood ban is lifted.
3. Increase International Cooperation and Enforcement Congress
should authorize and fund:
Enhanced satellite monitoring of fishing activities in the
Bering Sea and other shared waters.
Intelligence sharing agreements with allied nations to track
vessel movements and identify smuggling networks.
Support for international bodies combating IUU fishing.
4. Provide Economic Relief for Affected Communities
Congress should establish:
Emergency economic assistance for fishing communities
impacted by unfair competition, similar to the Seafood Trade
Relief Program.
Loan programs to help fishing operations modernize and
improve competitiveness.
Market development initiatives to promote American-caught
seafood.
5. Strengthen U.S. Fishery Legislation to Combat IUU Fishing
Congress should:
Pass S. 688, the Fish Act, a bill that would direct the
Administration to address IUU fishing in international
agreements, establish an IUU vessel list, and develop new
technologies to combat IUU fishing, among many other important
provisions.
Direct and fund the U.S. Coast Guard to increase efforts to
combat IUU fishing.
Conclusion
For more than two decades, Russian IUU crab fishing has undermined
American fishermen who play by the rules, invest in sustainable
practices, and support coastal communities across Alaska. The economic
losses documented by industry analysts represent more than statistics--
they represent lost livelihoods, struggling communities, and an
industry fighting for survival against unfair competition.
As more countries around the globe move to ban Russian seafood and
implement seafood traceability systems, they are looking to the U.S. as
a global leader. Congress has the opportunity to lead by example,
protecting American fishermen while promoting sustainable fishing
practices worldwide.
The time for half-measures has passed. American fishermen deserve a
level playing field, and American consumers deserve confidence that the
seafood on their tables was harvested legally and sustainably. I urge
this Committee to take decisive action to address IUU fishing. The
Committee has an opportunity to support the hardworking men and women
who make their living from America's marine resources.
Thank you for your attention to this critical issue affecting
thousands of American fishing families. I look forward to answering
your questions and collaborating with the Committee to develop
effective solutions.
Senator Sullivan. Thanks again, Mr. Prout. Great testimony.
Great recommendations. And you know, for the audience here,
these are some of the tough, great Alaska fishermen.
Some of you have seen the show Deadliest Catch. It is a
dangerous business, and they bring in some of their best
seafood, wild seafood in the world and shouldn't have to
compete against this kind of IUU activity.
So Dr. Saumweber, you will wrap it up, and then we will go
to questions.
STATEMENT OF WHITLEY SAUMWEBER, DIRECTOR, STEPHENSON OCEAN
SECURITY PROJECT, CSIS
[Technical problems.]
Senator Sullivan. You need to turn your mic on.
Mr. Saumweber. Thank you. Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member
Blunt Rochester, and distinguished members of the Committee,
thank you for inviting me to participate in today's hearing. It
is an honor to be here, and I commend you for focusing on the
urgent, important, and evolving challenge of IUU fishing.
My name is Whitley Saumweber, and I am a Professor of
Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island and the
Director of the Stephenson Ocean Security Project at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, where we examine the
intersection of ocean health and global security.
I would be remiss if I did not highlight our Ocean Security
and Human Rights Forum that we held just last week in
partnership with the U.S. IUU and Labor Rights Coalition, and
which addressed many of the topics we are discussing here
today. I also note, as Greg Poling did, that my comments at
this hearing are my own and should not be attributed to either
CSIS or to the University of Rhode Island.
I have been working on U.S. ocean governance and security
policy for more than two decades, and during this time I have
seen illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing evolve from
an important but secondary resource management issue, to one of
the foremost and most complex ocean security challenges we face
today.
It is important because of its centrality to questions of
national wealth, sovereignty, and market stability in regions
of the globe already beset by conflict, and to jobs and
communities here at home in the U.S.. It is complex because of
how the scale and nature of the challenge changes depending on
the region and markets being considered.
Effective policy solutions are therefore also complex, but
if successful, can support U.S. jobs, markets, and national
security, while offering roadmaps for dealing with issues of
global ocean governance and security that extend beyond just
seafood.
For these reasons, IUU fishing is a prime example of a
suite of emerging 21st century ocean security challenges that
threaten norms of maritime governance and commerce, but which
exist outside the bounds of more traditional security concerns.
Characteristics of these new ocean security threats include
a link to competition for marine resources, using gray zone
conflict, involvement in illicit and alternative trade
economies, a multiplier effect with climate impacts on marine
ecosystems, and impacts on human rights at sea.
IUU fishing has each of these characteristics, and I hope
we get to discuss some of those in more detail later in the
hearing. So how do we address this complex challenge?
Successful strategies generally fall into one of four
categories that should work in concert with each other, market
access control, operational interdiction, presence, and
resource and governance.
The U.S. is the largest single importer of seafood in the
world, and together with the EU and Japan, we control 60
percent of the total global market in seafood. This means that
comparable market access control policies across these three
traditional partners have the potential to reshape global
supply chains in deep and meaningful ways.
To be effective, such programs must include a strong supply
chain transparency mechanism, a risk assessment program based
on that information, a validation program, and crucially,
strategic enforcement cascades that allow for scalable and
targeted penalties. Here in the U.S., NOAA's Seafood Import
Modeling Program meets some of these criteria, but not all.
NOAA conducted a year-long review of the program in 2024
and released an action plan last November that had significant
support from both industry and civil society groups.
Implementation of the action plan would greatly advance the
ability of SIMP to meet the requirements I have described.
Market access control is the counter IUU tool with the
greatest potential global reach, but operational interdiction
of IUU activity remains important for deterrence. The U.S. can
support operational interdiction through direct action by
expanding shipwright agreements with partner nations, and we
can provide direct support from maritime domain awareness in
critical areas through both material assistance and capacity
building.
One example of such an arrangement is the Indo-Pacific
Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, already mentioned by
Greg Poling, between the Quad, that is U. S., India, Japan, and
Australia, and our Indo-Pacific partners. This agreement is a
prime example of the kind of partnership and soft power
security guarantee that the U.S. alone can offer to much of the
world, and which on our best days, is one of the key reasons
U.S. leadership has been indispensable for the past 80 years.
We provide help and support to those who need it and are
prepared to support our partners in their own efforts to claim
sovereign identity and rights. These are things we can offer
which our competitors, notably China and Russia, cannot, and it
is why such partnerships have provided a bulwark in the
continuing effort to support the growth of democracy worldwide.
To make this approach work, however, the U.S. must be
present in international fora and development work in order to
provide that alternative. In these efforts, three agencies in
particular are crucial, U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, and USAID. Each
of these play irreplaceable roles in the soft power competition
that is the foundation of counter IUU fishing work.
The dismantling of USAID has already caused widespread harm
to ongoing efforts, and the threats to NOAA are deeply
concerning. Just as the U.S. Government needs a positive
presence with partners abroad, it also needs capacity at home.
We are now entering the final year of the first national
strategy from the interagency working group for combatting IUU
fishing, and there is tremendous opportunity to build on
initial efforts.
With strong support for its member agencies, the working
group could form the foundation of coordinated enforcement
action. Conversely, significant budget cuts to any of the key
agencies will cripple counter IUU programs. Cuts to NOAA in
particular will fatally harm the ability to coordinate, conduct
supporting science, and be present in critical negotiations and
partnerships abroad.
Every U.S. Administration since George W. Bush has
established or endorsed national strategies to combat IUU
fishing. Similarly, every Congress over that time has supported
bipartisan legislation attempting to grapple with the issue, of
which Senator Sullivan, your FISH Act is a fine example.
I hope that this discussion today will help all of us to
take advantage of that momentum and work toward these
solutions. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Saumweber follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Whitley Saumweber, Director, Stephenson Ocean
Security Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member Blunt Rochester, and
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to
participate in today's hearing. It's an honor to be here and I commend
you for focusing on the urgent, important, and evolving challenge of
IUU Fishing.
My name is Whitley Saumweber and I am both a Professor of Marine
Affairs at the University of Rhode Island (URI) and the Director of the
Stephenson Ocean Security Project at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) where we examine the intersection of ocean
health and global security and seek policy solutions that support
sustainable development and reduce conflict. I would be remiss if I did
not highlight our Ocean Security and Human Rights Forum\1\ that we held
just last week in partnership with the U.S. IUU and Labor Rights
Coalition,\2\ and which addressed many of the topics we are discussing
here today. I also note that my comments at this hearing are my own and
should not be attributed to either CSIS or URI.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ https://www.csis.org/events/ocean-security-and-human-rights-
forum
\2\ US IUULR Coalition Joint Statement
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Introduction
I have been working on U.S. ocean governance and security policy
for more than two decades including work here in the Senate, at NOAA,
the White House, and now in the private sector and academia. During
this time, I have seen Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU)
fishing evolve from an important, but secondary, resource management
issue to one of the foremost and most complex ocean security challenges
we face today. It is important because of its centrality to questions
of national wealth, sovereignty, and market stability in regions of the
globe already beset by conflict and to jobs and communities here at
home in the U.S. It is complex because of how the scale and nature of
the challenge changes depending on the region and markets being
considered. At one end of the spectrum, it involves nationalized
distant water fleets, grey zone tactics, and soft power deployment as
we see in the case of China and its large foreign fishing endeavors. At
the other end of the spectrum, we may be discussing small, artisanal
conflicts in the Caribbean that nonetheless have the potential to
disenfranchise legal fishers and destabilize stocks. In both cases, the
solution sets may have similar elements but also require some nuance to
address specific regional needs. Finally, IUU fishing is a multifaceted
challenge that is involved not just with the fish caught on a vessel
somewhere at sea but is intertwined inextricably with global currents
of peer competition, trade policy, market access control, supply chain
transparency, and critically, human rights. Effective policy solutions
are therefore equally complex and must address multiple mandates and
capacities in ways that are politically challenging but, if successful,
can support U.S. jobs, markets, and national security while offering
roadmaps for dealing with issues of global ocean governance, trade, and
security that extend beyond just seafood.
2. IUU Fishing as a 21st Century Security Threat
IUU Fishing is prime example of a type of emerging 21st century
ocean security challenge that threatens norms of maritime governance
and commerce. These challenges exist outside the bounds of traditional
security concerns, involving such drivers as competition for living
marine resources, gray zone conflict, alternative trade economies,
climate impacts on marine ecosystems, and human rights at sea. None of
these challenges are easily dealt with solely through traditional
avenues of naval power and yet taken together pose as great a risk to
global stability as other more kinetic threats. Rather these issues
require a holistic approach to maritime statecraft that incorporates
elements of domestic trade and market policies, foreign aid, and
maritime domain awareness.
2.1 A highly competed resource
Approximately 3 billion people, more than a third of the global
population, rely on fish for a critical portion of their daily protein
intake.\3\ That number is expected to increase at a non-linear rate as
both the world's population and the per capita consumption of fish
continue to increase.\4\ This latter factor is a positive indicator of
human health and well-being and is generally associated with the move
out of extreme poverty with an increased access to highly nutritious
foods. But ecosystems are already overtaxed. Global marine capture
fisheries are essentially fully exploited with total catch remaining
relatively flat since the 1990s at around 85 mmt. Total global fish
consumption has continued to grow, with demand increasingly met by
terrestrial or marine based aquaculture. But many aquaculture supply
chains rely on wild capture sources of feed, putting pressure on
keystone ecological stocks such as Antarctic krill, menhaden in the
western Atlantic, and sardinella in west Africa.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ 2024 FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture
\4\ Boyd et al., 2018: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01246-9
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Climate change is already impacting these stocks by reducing
overall global productivity and causing broad geographic shifts in
marine ecosystems. Fishery productivity under the worst climate
scenarios is expected to decrease by as much as 50 percent in the
tropics due to warming waters.\5\ This is also the region with the most
direct dependence on marine resources for food and economic security
and losses of such magnitude will be hugely destabilizing. Ecosystem
shifts are generally poleward but, in some cases, like the western
Pacific, stocks may shift east or west. No matter the direction, we are
already seeing disruptions in both long standing economic and food
security systems but also, importantly, the scientific and technocratic
infrastructure that has been established to manage these systems
sustainably.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ UN IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere
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All these challenges are further exacerbated by IUU Fishing. It has
been estimated that 30 percent of global catch is not counted by the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization with the potential undercount being
as high as 60 percent.\6\ This discrepancy has huge implications for
the sustainability of stocks but also for the ability to model and
forecast impacts while disrupting legal markets.
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\6\ Pauly et al., 2016: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10244
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2.2 An avenue for gray zone conflict
The concept of maritime gray zone conflict is a commonly accepted
way of considering modern inter-state disputes in highly contested
arenas, especially when those disputes involve nuclear armed states
that wish to avoid actual war. Gray zone activity connotes plausible
deniability, so that leaders on both sides can choose to interpret a
provocative interaction in ways that are non-escalatory. There is a
broad spectrum of actions that can fall under this rubric. Looking just
at the South China Sea we have regular physical interventions by the
Chinese Coast Guard which have resulted in harm to national assets and
personnel of other nations.\7\ Framed as maritime enforcement activity,
these activities can be coded as non-strategic. At the other end of the
conflict spectrum in the region, China is using its fishing fleets, and
even subsidizing their construction, as a maritime militia to present
both a physical presence and barrier.\8\ Private actors--even with
substantial support from their home states--can easily be disavowed by
governments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ https://apnews.com/article/china-philippines-us-sea-clash-
d08f4532c2a66047c6fa2833b
76d7773
\8\ https://www.csis.org/analysis/pulling-back-curtain-chinas-
maritime-militia
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Both these examples, however, represent modes of direct conflict,
even if they are `gray' in nature. When considering 21st century ocean
security threats, the category of `gray' conflict should also be
reflective of other kinds of competition. Any means of resource control
is ultimately an expression of sovereignty or lack thereof by others.
Thus, distant water fishing fleets can serve both legitimate economic
interests as well as strategic state needs by their presence in foreign
waters and the pressure they may exert on local resources. Shore based
infrastructure can also be considered part of this equation especially
when it is under the control of non-local actors and allows for the
isolation of local resources from local economies. For example,
development of a private port and fish processing facilities that
operate outside of local laws and without local employment.\9\ This
type of control further erodes local resource sovereignty and can lead
to closed supply chains that do not provide equitable benefits to host
nations. In addition, these types of ventures may often be vehicles of
corruption through opaque and uneven access agreements. These examples
of conflict are `gray' in that they use economic and legal mechanisms
in a coercive, corrupt, or coopting way to seize control over resource
supply chains for strategic ends.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ https://ocean.csis.org/commentary/distant-water-fishing-along-
china-s-maritime-silk-road/
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2.3 External trade economies
Just as the rise of asymmetric gray zone conflict presents a
growing challenge to the norms of ocean governance, so too does the
emergence of asymmetric economic competition. By this I mean trade
flows and economies that operate outside, and often in explicit and
direct abeyance, of existing market rules and expectations. The
clearest example of this phenomenon is the rise of the shadow fleet of
oil and gas tankers and associated vessels being used to carry fossil
fuels from sanctioned states such as Russia, Iran, and Venezuela to
willing market nations such as China and India.\10\ \11\ At some point
a market becomes large enough to go from being illegal to a competitor
and we must ask ourselves what that point is and, as with asymmetric
kinetic threats, how we approach it as it is normalized. All sanctioned
commodities--not just oil--have the potential to enter this alternate
economy depending on demand. Seafood can be sanctioned at both the
state and corporate level and trade in IUU should be considered a trade
in illicit commodities as much as sanctioned oil or arms or technology
with as great a potential over the long term to destabilize key regions
of the globe. Once again, we come back to the question of sovereignty
and resource control. In this case the tools at hand are market access
control and supply chain transparency.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-shadow-war-against-west
\11\ https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-exorcise-russias-ghost-fleet
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2.4 Human Rights
In a fully competed ocean with emerging, unregulated trade flows
the pressure to increase economic margins is intense. As has been the
case throughout history, one of the most straightforward ways to do so
is to reduce the costs of the labor force. In this case there is a
large and exploitable population of migrant labor available, primarily
in southeast Asia, at the same moment that new opaque supply chains are
opening. We know that IUU Fishing goes hand in hand with forced labor
at sea.\12\ Distant water fishing fleets are especially primed for
abuse with long voyages and isolation the norm. It is an easy
conjecture to imagine that other supply chains in these alternative
economies are also taking advantage of similar opportunities to exploit
their labor force. With seafood we also know that we cannot isolate the
maritime elements of the supply chain in dealing with this moral
travesty. Illegal products at sea are often processed and packaged
illegally on shore. The Outlaw Ocean Project has recently highlighted
the abuse of North Korean and Uyghur populations in Chinese seafood
processing facilities and of poor women in Indian shrimp plants.\13\
Once again, we must consider how market access and transparency can be
used to combat this problem.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Selig et al., 2022: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-
022-28916-2
\13\ https://www.theoutlawocean.com/
\14\ https://www.csis.org/analysis/streamlining-government-
coordination-rights-conscious-supply-chains
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. IUU Fishing Solution Sets
Because of the complexity of the IUU challenge successful counter
strategies must necessarily include elements that reach across
individual agency mandates and, ideally, operate with intentional
prioritization, coordination, and leveraging of capabilities within the
U.S. government and between partners abroad. Broadly these activities
fall into the following categories: (1) Market Access Control; (2)
Operational Interdiction; (3) Partnerships and Presence; and (4)
Resources and Governance.
3.1 Market Access Control
The EU remains the largest common market for seafood in the world,
accounting for approximately 35 percent of global imports but the U.S.
is second and remains the largest single state market accounting for
approximately 16 percent of global imports by value. If we also include
Japan, the fourth largest market by import value, we reach nearly 60
percent of the total global market in seafood.\15\ This means that
comparable market access control policies across these three
traditional partners have the potential to reshape global supply chains
in deep and meaningful ways. To be effective such programs must
include: (1) strong supply chain transparency mechanisms; (2) a program
of risk assessment based on those mechanisms; (3) a program of
validation based on the risk assessment; and (4) a program of strategic
enforcement cascades based on the validation that allow for scalable
and targeted enforcement. These actions can and should range from
denial of entry for individual shipments to criminal enforcement and
economic sanctions on beneficial owners and supporting states.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ UNFAO GLOBEFISH
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Each of these individual programs can take different forms but the
critical elements must each exist and work together to be effective.
The EU maintains a requirement for state sponsored catch certificates
and holds out the possibility of state level trade sanctions for
failure to comply with anti-IUU fishing regulations through a red-
yellow-green carding system. The U.S. requires individual importers of
record to submit supply chain information to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Seafood Import Monitoring Program
(SIMP) with the potential for post-hoc administrative penalties should
an audit find a violation. NOAA also maintains broad, though seldom
used authority, to apply state level sanctions on vessels or nations
listed in a biennial report to Congress on IUU activities as mandated
by the High Seas Driftnet Moratorium Protection Act.\16\ Conceptually,
SIMP remains an important part of U.S. market access control but broad
dissatisfaction with NOAA's implementation of the program led to a
yearlong review and subsequent action plan released in November 2024
that had significant support from both industry and civil society
groups.\17\ Implementation of the action plan would greatly advance the
ability of SIMP to meet the requirements of an effective market access
control program as described above. Particularly important elements of
the action plan included the commitments to require data submission
prior to entry, implementation of an automated analysis of data for
risk factors to better leverage resources and reduce costs, and to
expand the definition of IUU fishing to align with the UNFAO
definition\18\ and to expressly include human rights and labor abuses.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/international/international-
affairs/report-iuu-fishing-bycatch-and-shark-catch
\17\ https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/s3/2024-11/SIMP-Action-
Plan_final.pdf
\18\ UNFAO IUU IPOA
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In addition to efforts to improve our own market access control
program here in the U.S. and to bring it into alignment with other
major market states, we should continue to support the development of
other related measures abroad. These include implementation of the Port
State Measures Agreement, the first counter-IUU multilateral
instrument, and development of nascent access control programs in
strong partner nations like Japan and the Republic of Korea which share
the U.S.' concern about China's use of seafood trade for security
purposes. Each of which also represent significant global markets. Both
countries have just begun to implement their programs at the pilot
stage.
3.2 Operational Interdiction
While market access control remains the counter-IUU tool with the
greatest potential global reach, operational interdiction of IUU
activity remains critical for deterrence and the demonstration of
sovereign control over marine resources as well as a commitment to the
norms and standards of ocean governance under the UN Convention on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The stability and credibility of UNCLOS is a
key foundation for ocean security, sustainability, and sovereignty.
UNCLOS created the basic jurisdictional framework for ocean governance,
drew a clear political geography for the ocean, and assigned specific
rights and duties assigned to different categories of states. Its
provisions represent the common set of rules that have supported
relatively stable maritime sovereignty and commerce for the past 50
years. But this foundation is under threat by the unilateral actions of
China, Russia, and others as noted above.
A recent report by the ocean conservation organization Oceana,
using data from Global Fishing Watch, found that China's fishing fleets
account for 30 percent of global activity on the high seas and can be
found fishing in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of more than 90
nations worldwide.\19\ Understanding where such larger fleets are
operating, whether they are doing so legally, and having the ability to
appropriately interdict illegal operations once found remain
significant challenges for many nations. Without these capabilities
individual countries may be effectively seeding sovereign control of a
national resource to a foreign nation and placing itself at national
risk based on the value of that resource. Bilateral access agreements
developed under such conditions are likely to be made under pressure
and without transparency and may be avenues for corruption as a means
of achieving unrelated geopolitical goals. It is these very concerns
that led the U.S. Coast Guard\20\ to declare IUU Fishing a greater
maritime threat than piracy, the U.S. combatant commands SOUTHCOM \21\
and AFRICOM \22\ to identify IUU fishing as a significant source of
maritime security threat in the southeastern Pacific and Gulf of Guinea
respectively, and fostered the release of a 2022 National Security
Memorandum\23\ directing greater coordination on the issue all within
the last five years.
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\19\ China's Global Fishing Footprint
\20\ USCG IUU Fishing Strategic Outlook
\21\ https://www.southcom.mil/Media/Special-Coverage/SOUTHCOM-
Support-to-Operation-Southern-Cross/
\22\ https://www.africom.mil/pressrelease/34377/africom-and-law-
enforcement-cooperation-enhances-maritime-security-in-west-africa
\23\ Memorandum on Combatting Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated
Fishing and Associated Labor Abuses
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.S. can support operational interdiction through direct action
by pursuing ship-rider agreements with partner nations to enable U.S.
vessels, most often from the USCG, to act to enforce the sovereignty of
that partner's EEZ. We can also provide direct support for maritime
domain awareness (MDA) in critical areas and work with partners to
provide the technical capacity and training to use and distribute such
information. One example of such an arrangement is the Indo-Pacific
Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPPMDA) between the Quad
(U.S., India, Japan, and Australia) and our Indo-Pacific partners.\24\
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\24\ Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.3 Partnerships and Presence
The Indo Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness
described above is a prime example of the kind of partnership and soft
power security guarantee that the U.S. alone can offer to much of the
world and which, on our best days, is one of the key reasons U.S.
leadership has been indispensable for the past 80 years. We provide
help and support to those who need it and are prepared to support our
partners in their own efforts to claim sovereign identity and rights.
These are things we can offer which our competitors, notably China
and Russia, cannot and it is why such partnerships have provided a
bulwark in the continuing effort to support the growth of democracy
worldwide. No alliance is stronger than one freely given. One element
above all others is crucial for this approach to work, however, and
that is presence. The U.S. must be present in international fora and
development work in order to provide that alternative. We must be
active participants in Regional Fishery Management Organizations as
well as foreign aid programs. We must be prepared to support capacity
building through technical assistance and through the direct provision
of aid, material, and assets. In this work three agencies in particular
are crucial: the U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, and USAID. Each of these play
irreplaceable roles in the soft power competition that is the
foundation of counter-IUU fishing work.
3.4 Resources and Governance
Just as the U.S. government needs a positive presence with partners
abroad to effectively counter IUU fishing it also needs the capacity at
home to work together, coordinate and support individual lines of
effort, and to develop new, more efficient ways of identifying and
acting on risk. The 2020 Maritime SAFE Act established the Interagency
Maritime SAFE Working Group and charged it with developing a government
wide roadmap for addressing IUU fishing. The working group, under the
rotating chairmanship of the Department of State, NOAA, and USCG,
succeeded in developing a five-year strategy for 2022-2026 that laid
out approaches for priority regions and flag states in the work
period.\25\ Implementation of this first plan was uneven but contained
much to build on and represents the only statutory mandate for such
work. As we enter the final year of this first strategy there is the
opportunity to build on initial efforts. With strong leadership and
support from the Administration and Congress this working group could
form the foundation of coordinated enforcement action between NOAA,
USCG, Department of State, DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and
Treasury. It could support more efficient transfer of information and
targeted support for partners abroad. Conversely, significant budget
cuts to any of these key agencies will cripple the ability to work
together, share information and strategies, and create significant
roadblocks to any meaningful counter IUU strategy by the U.S.
government.
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\25\ National 5 Year Strategy for Combatting IUU Fishing: 2022-2026
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4. Conclusion
Every U.S. Administration since George W. Bush has established or
endorsed national strategies to combat IUU fishing. Similarly, in every
Congress over that time, there has been bi-partisan legislation
attempting to grapple with the issue. I applaud the bi-partisan work
here in the Senate demonstrating this commitment most notably through
Chairman Sullivan's FISH Act that has recently marked up in this
Committee. I also note that important bi-partisan legislation has
previously been introduced in the House, specifically Representative
Huffman's Illegal Fishing and Forced Labor Prevention Act which I
understand may be reintroduced in this Congress. I hope that this
discussion today will help all of us to take advantage of that momentum
and work towards these solutions.
Senator Sullivan. Great. Excellent opening statements by
all four, actually five of our witnesses. Senator Whitehouse is
at another hearing. So, thank you on that. Let me begin with
the basic question of this idea of whole of Government
approach.
One of the things that I have been trying to do in my
capacity, but I think we can do a better job of it. And Dr.
Saumweber, your point about Japan, EU, and the United States,
60 percent of all imports in the world. That is huge power.
So after we finally got the U.S. Government to ban the
importation of Russian seafood, took a long time, and then ban
the, as Mr. Prout talked about, the kind of laundering of
Russian seafood through China. They tried to cheat. Communist
dictatorships are all working together to cheat, as they
typically do.
I have been trying to get other countries, our allies, EU,
Canada, Japan in particular, to do something similar. The
Canadians, to their credit, have done a lot of banning of
Russian seafood imports, but I would like to get all of your
opinions very quickly on just what you think some of the key
things we could do with like-minded partners and allies to
enhance international cooperation, which I think is really the
key. It has kind of come out in all your testimony.
And importantly, also get the word out--the naming and
shaming that Mr. Poling talked about. You know, China likes to,
you know, pretend that it is a country that sticks up for
developing countries in Africa, the Pacific Islands. And as
your testimony showed, Mr. Poling, it is very much to the
contrary.
Their activities are completely undermining the
sovereignty, independence, economic capacity of these countries
that China claims that it tries to favor. We need to get the
word out on that much better.
So can I get any and all of your views on the need for
deeper international cooperation and what specific
recommendations you would make for us or the Trump
Administration to do that? And I will just take any and of you
guys to weigh in on that question. Go ahead, Dr. Saumweber.
Mr. Saumweber. Sure. I will start. Thank you for that
question. Yes, I absolutely--as I pointed out in my testimony
and you noted, you know, we have these strong traditional
partners in the EU and Japan, and we are together this huge
block of the seafood market. That market power is----
Senator Sullivan. Is huge.
Mr. Saumweber. It is tremendous. And it is really true that
market access control offers the most far-reaching tool for
controlling this problem--for getting at this problem. If we
can work with those partners to set common standards, we can
set the tenor for the market. We can set the direction that it
goes. So it is really going to require us to work closely with
the European Union----
Senator Sullivan. And in your experience, do the Europeans
and the Japanese want to do this? I was a little disappointed.
I tried to get the--when the Biden Administration was putting
in a strong fish statement in the G8 summit agreement with the
G8 leaders, my office actually drafted that statement. Sent it
to the Biden team.
To their credit, they used it. The Japanese, who are good
friends, good allies, they thwarted it. So if you are from
Japan and you are watching this, you know, again, I am a strong
supporter of the alliance. I think the Japanese are great on so
many issues.
On this issue, they were weak, and they needed to step up
and be stronger. I hope the people from the Japanese embassy
are watching this here.
Mr. Saumweber. I think Japan cares a great deal about IUU
fishing. I think----
Senator Sullivan. Do they? OK----
Mr. Saumweber. Yes, they do. From their perspective, they
have a very serious problem with the Chinese in particular
coming into their waters, and North Korea as well. And so, I
think they are very concerned about it from a sovereignty
standpoint, from illegal presence of----
Senator Sullivan. Because it hurts their fishermen, too.
Mr. Saumweber. Yes, absolutely. And they have a very, very
strong concern with it. The sort of particulars of it are a
little bit different than here in the United States, but they
do have a market access control program, as does the EU.
The EU is in some ways further along than we are, and they
take a slightly different approach in how they implement it,
but they do you have a program, as do we. And if we can align
standards, that would hugely powerful.
Senator Sullivan. Yes----
Mr. Saumweber. The Japanese are just kind of at the start
of getting it going, so we need to support them and to help
them----
Senator Sullivan. So you think that would be a really
important kind of outcome of this hearing to work on that?
Mr. Saumweber. Absolutely.
Senator Sullivan. Good. Any other thoughts on that, Mr.
Poling?
Mr. Poling. I would make two points. First, I think we
could do a far better job collaborating with our most
technologically advanced partners when it comes to supporting
maritime domain awareness.
Senator Sullivan. Yes.
Mr. Poling. We are vanishingly close to a point in time
when it will be all but impossible for a vessel that has a
metal superstructure that is say five meters or longer to run
dark anywhere in the world.
We know what the technology looks like to accomplish that.
Combinations of low-earth orbit satellites collecting synthetic
aperture radar, radio frequency protection, et cetera.
But most of that capability is in the private sector, and
it is not all American. On synthetic aperture radar, we have
got maybe two of the top four companies trying to develop low-
Earth orbit constellations. The others are in Japan and Europe.
When it comes to radiofrequency----
Senator Sullivan. But still our allies.
Mr. Poling. Our allies. But for a number of reasons, mostly
around security sector assistance, our platforms that we
provide to allies and partners only incorporate American
technology.
To give one example, in the case of the Philippines, who is
up against the most coercion from China's maritime militia,
they have all but abandoned using preferred U.S. platforms in
favor of Canada's platform. Now the dark vessel detection, or
DVD system, because that can incorporate not just Canadian, but
also American and European technology.
Whereas the American platforms only incorporate American
companies. We need to understand that, of course, there is
creative competition here among tech companies, but this is a
global problem.
And we should not turn partners away from whether it is
Japanese, European, Israeli, Korean alternatives that can do a
good job. That we should be able to light up the entire ocean
in the next 5 to 10 years, but we won't do it with just
American tech.
The second point I would make is, on the legal front, yes,
we are parties and champions of port state measures, of the
Fish Stocks Act. We are still not a party to UNCLOS. And that
gives China a free point in every debate in every international
platform.
Senator Sullivan. OK, good. Senator Blunt Rochester.
Senator Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to
put a fine point on a comment that was said at the very end of
your testimony, Dr. Saumweber, where you said this used to be a
secondary issue.
I was just writing down different words from jobs, and the
economy, and our small businesses, and mid-sized businesses
that are impacted, our environment, as Senator Whitehouse
mentioned, criminal activities, trade. I wrote down technology.
I wrote down health.
Because we haven't really talked about the health impact of
this, but when we are dealing with illegal products, we don't
know what is in some of these things. So, even our health
status. national security.
And we talked about Russia and China, and just the impact
that they have not only on our national security, but also on
their influence in other places around the world. And you know,
and markets, our market power, piracy, international trade,
technology. To me, this is a front and center issue.
And so, I want to start off with my first comment to say, I
am excited to join the FISH Act. That is number one.
Senator Sullivan. There you go. Progress.
Senator Blunt Rochester. There you go.
[Laughter.]
Senator Blunt Rochester. And second, Dr. Saumweber, I
wanted to ask your opinion. We know that NOAA National Marine
Fisheries Service plays a vital role in combating IUU fishing.
From your experience, can you talk about what the impact
of--the operational impact of a 30 percent budget cut to NOAA's
enforcement activities, and can you describe how these cuts
would affect NOAA's ability to conduct investigations into
seafood fraud and mislabeling, which was another thing that we
mentioned, issues that directly impact not only consumers but
domestic fisheries?
Mr. Saumweber. Yes, thank you for that question. A 30
percent cut in NOAA's budget would be devastating to these
efforts on a number of fronts. First of all, among the first
things to go with any budget cut, even a much smaller cut than
30 percent, is the kind of interagency coordination that is
hard, difficult, requires time, but is sometimes seen as being
outside of kind of the core day to day mission of good Federal
workers.
And so they don't dedicate time to those kinds of things
that are complicated but necessary to attack this kind of
really difficult challenge. And so, right out the window, you
would sort of lose that coordination capacity that is so
fundamental to this effort.
Next, you are going to lose the ability to have supporting
science, to have the necessary kind of research done to
understand how these stocks are changing, to understand what
critical limits may or may not be being passed, and to be
thinking about how this is really impacting our fishermen here
at home.
And then finally, and I think as important in any of those
situations is the ability, as I mentioned, to be present, to be
part of these international negotiations, to be at the regional
fishery management organizations where we are negotiating with
China, where we are negotiating with our competitors.
We need to be educated and speak in a way that is informed
about the state of affairs in the world and about the nature of
fish stocks and the health of the ocean. And with those cuts,
it will fundamentally damage the ability to do that.
Senator Blunt Rochester. Thank you. Doctor--or Mr. Prout,
in addition to the travel, I would also say you have the best
lapel pin of everyone as well with that beautiful crab. Mr.
Prout, thank you for being here today. I appreciate you
highlighting IUU fishing as a national security threat, and I
share that view.
I would like to focus on a particularly urgent issue raised
in your testimony, and that is the use of North Korean
smuggling networks to launder Russian crab into the global
seafood supply chain. From your vantage point in the commercial
seafood sector, how visible or traceable is this laundering
activity, and what makes it hard to detect?
Mr. Prout. Thank you, Senator Blunt Rochester. It is
incredibly hard to detect because eventually it just lands as
the name of another country. So there is no commitment to
actually saying where it originally comes from, as cool would
help with.
So once it goes through there and goes through those
channels to get modified and then placed as a different country
of origin, you essentially lose the original traceability.
And then of course, that is easier imported to these other
countries around the world and possibly even back into the U.S.
domestic market so that U.S. consumers are unaware of where the
true source of their seafood and what they are supporting is
actually coming from.
So it is incredibly difficult to really truly trace that.
We know what is happening, but after it takes effect, it is
hard to continue to follow it.
Senator Blunt Rochester. And what are the risks to U.S.
fishermen, processors, consumers, if seafood from sanctioned
regimes continue to enter the market undetected?
Mr. Prout. Undetected--it is--one of the key components of
it is the downward pressure it puts on prices for true
fishermen who are held to a higher standard of safety, of
responsibility, and sustainability for their fisheries.
So really, it is the downward pressure that that is putting
on local fishermen. It is, you know, when those products enter
the market, it puts a tremendous amount of that downward
pressure on prices for U.S. fishermen.
Senator Blunt Rochester. Mr. Chairman, I had more questions
than I will submit for the record, but could I ask one last
question?
Senator Sullivan. Sure, sure. I am going to do another
round.
Senator Blunt Rochester. Oh, OK.
Senator Sullivan. Or two, or three.
Senator Blunt Rochester. OK.
[Laughter.]
Senator Sullivan. This is very important. I think Senator
Cantwell might be on her way, but we will keep asking
questions.
Senator Blunt Rochester. Perfect. Mr. Prout, you also
described Russian fishing vessels exhibiting behavior that
suggests they may be engaged in intelligence gathering near
critical infrastructure.
I think this is one of the biggest issues that we talk a
lot about on this committee as well is critical infrastructure
around the world and just any kind of surveillance, you know,
vulnerabilities. How concerned are you that commercial fishing
vessels could be used as cover for surveillance or sabotage,
particularly in the U.S. waters or near allied infrastructure?
Mr. Prout. Thank you, Senator Blunt Rochester, for the
question. It is definitely of concern because we know what is
happening with the monitoring that we have in place. These
Russian vessels or Chinese vessels that are labeled as foreign
fishing vessels are not exhibiting behavior or maneuvering that
is typically associated with fishing behavior.
They are stationing at certain areas around the country
typically, as you mentioned, to gather reconnaissance and
possibly even sabotage for future operations. So it is
definitely a major concern that they kind of use these fishing
labels or fishing operations as a covert method for their
sabotage and intel gathering capabilities and goals.
Senator Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will
yield back.
Senator Sullivan. All right. It is great to have the
Ranking Member here. Are you ready, Senator Cantwell or--I will
now turn it over to Senator Cantwell for some questions.
STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON
Senator Cantwell. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank
you to my colleague for also the great work on the
Subcommittee. And thank you, Senator Sullivan, just for the
important discussion about illegally unreported, unregulated
fisheries, and how much that causes harm in both Washington,
and Alaska, and across the Nation. I am sure that has pretty
much been the subject of this conversation.
Senator Sullivan. The world.
Senator Cantwell. OK, good.
Senator Sullivan. Alaska, Delaware, Texas--the world.
Senator Cantwell. So illegal fishing counts for up to one-
third the world's total fishery. So about 11 percent, $22
billion in seafood imports were caught illegally. So this
really does--China and Russia are two of the worst actors in
this space, and Russia in particular poses a direct threat to
the livelihood of U.S. fishermen, including in my home state.
One study found that one-third of fish imported from China
was actually Russian fish, and we need to keep up the pressure
to stop this illegal Russian seafood from disrupting the
markets here in the United States. So, in the 2022 defense
bill, working with my colleague from Alaska, we included the
largest ocean legislative package in decades, including
provisions to expand NOAA's seafood traceability programs.
And we worked together with the NOAA Corps to expand their
fleet of vessels and aircraft so that we can more and better
affect stock assessments, and better science, and support for
fishing families to stop the illegal fishing. So, the
Administration though is calling for us to be seafood dominant.
That is great. They say they care about stopping illegal
fishing, and yet they are gutting the core of NOAA programs and
staffing, and that could have disastrous effects to our
fisheries management, science, and enforcement. So far the
Administration's action have led to 576 employees at the
National Marine Fisheries Service being lost.
That is an 18 percent reduction in staff from January, and
a 36 percent vacancy rate of normal staffing levels. NOAA told
fishery managers not to expect basic survey data that they need
to manage fisheries.
This is unacceptable. To make it worse, 30 percent of
NOAA's research ships will be tied up at the docks this summer
because the Administration is refusing to hire the credentialed
mariners to sail, and that is very problematic.
But we all know that at least two pollock stock assessment
surveys and salmon surveys on the West Coast are canceled. So,
my question to you, Mr. Saumweber is--science is the
foundation. How are these current NOAA budget cuts impacting on
not being able to do stock assessments hurting us in our
ability to combat illegal fishing?
Mr. Saumweber. Thank you, Senator. So, budget cuts to NOAA
are devastating to our ability to combat IUU fishing. You can't
really combat the problem without understanding what is there.
The challenge, as you noted, is to have a strong foundation,
strong understanding of what is sustainable, of what it is
possible to catch.
And without that understanding, we have a very limited
ability to work to set appropriate boundaries, to work with our
partners to combat IUU fishing. NOAA science is the foundation
for all of these negotiations that we are doing in the
international space, with our partners, and it is the
foundation for the work that we do here at home to prevent
illegal products from coming into the Nation.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you for that. Mr. Prout, as a
crabber, are you concerned about the NOAA fisheries workforce
programs, and the cuts and impacts?
Mr. Prout. Yes. Thank you, Ranking Member Senator Cantwell.
Yes, absolutely. The NOAA surveys are an essential part of how
we run our fisheries. They are essentially the backbone of our
fisheries across the U.S.
So without them, we don't have the data set for safe and
sustainable harvest levels to be set. These surveys guide our
quotas, protect the resource, and they give regulators the
essential data and confidence to know whether or not they
should open, or in some cases close a fishery.
So if those surveys are underfunded or not funded at all or
delayed and they are operating--it causes a tremendous amount
of uncertainty for the processors involved, for the fishermen
involved, for the communities that rely on those species.
Continued investments and funding of those of those surveys
is not just good science in my opinion, it is also required for
economic stability, so you still have these fisheries in a
sustainable manner for the future.
Senator Cantwell. Well, again, I apologize to my colleagues
and others if I am repeating something that has been said, but
we worked in a bipartisan base to secure Coast Guard funding
and infrastructure investment.
We made massive upgrades to the Coast Guard infrastructure
in Kodiak--your hometown, I guess. And we authorized new heavy
weather boats needed for search and rescue for the fishermen
off our coast.
And I am concerned that the Coast Guard has temporary
reassigned ships and aircraft away from those core missions
without a concrete plan. So for example, a C-130 based in
Kodiak is now being used to fly ``alien expulsion missions'' on
behalf of ICE.
We need them to do the search and rescue, and to deter
illegal fishing in the Bering Sea. So, you highlighted in your
written statement that we should fund Coast Guard to increase
to combat illegal fishing. How important is this presence in
Kodiak for crabbers?
Mr. Prout. Thank you, Ranking Member Cantwell. It is
tremendously important.
When you start losing necessary infrastructure and pieces
of equipment that are dedicated for those search and rescue
efforts, those--the IUU efforts to deter IUU, and they start
being allocated to different areas and then--when they
originally attended, it makes it extremely difficult for
fishermen to make safe and sound decisions when you know there
is going to be less assets available for one of the most
primary functions, which is search and rescue and protection of
the fleet.
So it is very critical that we maintain those pieces of
infrastructure for the local fishing communities throughout
Alaska and the U.S.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I
could just, Mr. Saumweber, for the record. I asked--you talked
about surveys, but I think you probably believe the fishing
patrols are also important. The fishing patrols are also
important----
Mr. Saumweber. Yes, of course.
Senator Cantwell.--to the management council.
Mr. Saumweber. Absolutely, yes.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Senator Cantwell. And look on
stock assessments, I am adamant that we need to do it. To be
honest, the Biden Administration was a fail on it. We had to
not focus nearly enough on stock assessments. You may recall, I
had the Deputy Secretary of Commerce here for his confirmation
hearing just a couple of weeks ago with the Trump
Administration, and I kind of read them the riot act on stock
assessments, so it is a bipartisan abuse----
Senator Cantwell. I don't remember that.
[Laughter.]
Senator Sullivan. Oh, I think you remember that. More
importantly, he remembers it, right.
Senator Cantwell. I am joking. I am joking.
Senator Sullivan. But so, I agree. And as I mentioned
earlier, if we get to the budget reconciliation bill, would
love your guys' vote on it. Maybe that is not going to happen.
But one thing that will happen is a massive historic
investment in the Coast Guard, which is going to be, probably
as I mentioned in my opening statement, the biggest investment
in the Coast Guard in U.S. history. $22 billion--it has never
been seen, anything like that.
And it is all going to go into cutters, and icebreakers,
and helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft, and shoreside
infrastructure in Kodiak and Juneau and Seattle. So, there is
going to be a lot.
Senator Cantwell. I so appreciate your leadership on this
issue, and your forthright education of people who didn't quite
understand how critical stock assessments were to our fisheries
and to being able to manage and police.
But I do hope that in these resource allocations, that we
will make these points about the resources being shifted and
how we--I mean this is why I believe in a NOAA Organic Act,
because I am tired of people coming in every two years----
Senator Sullivan. I agree.
Senator Cantwell.--and giving us a different statement. So,
thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Sullivan. So let me ask for the Committee, we have
had a mention of one bill, and Mr. Prout mentioned it. It was
actually a bill that I got into a committee markup of a bigger
bill here. Was dealing with the cool labeling that you
mentioned, Mr. Prout.
And then I also had in last year's NDAA a provision saying
no Chinese fish in any of our military commissaries, PXs, you
know, chow halls. I mean, you think the Chinese Communist
Party, PLA, is serving Alaskan crab in their Chinese military
mess halls? They are not, OK.
So that bill was unfortunately stripped out of the NDAA
last year by the then Speaker of the House. I have no idea why
he was kind of pro-China, but can I just get the Committee's
view very quickly, because I want to turn to some other issues,
on those two bills. Mr. Prout, I am assuming the COOL Act,
cooked crab labeling legislation that I got in that was
actually the CHIPS and Science bill a couple of years ago, you
and others are still very supportive of it. You mentioned it in
your opening testimony.
And then I had a provision in the NDAA last year that
passed as very bipartisan in the markup of the Armed Services
committee, no Chinese fish in any U.S. military, PX,
commissary, chow hall.
I mean, come on, why on earth would we or the U.S. military
buy IUU fish from China when it can buy great Alaskan crab. So
can I get just your views on that? This will be important as I
press to get this legislation passed again this year. Mr.
Poling, you have a view on either of those?
Mr. Poling. Well, on the second----
Senator Sullivan. No Chinese communist fish in commissaries
and on U.S. military bases?
Mr. Poling. I won't speak to whether the fish are
communist, but I do----
[Laughter.]
Mr. Poling. I do think it sends an important signal of the
U.S.'s commitment to only import sustainably caught and legally
caught fish.
Senator Sullivan. Good. Mr. Rickard.
Mr. Rickard. I think the country of origin labor laws have
been massively important for domestic fisheries. And being
able--for consumers to be able to make choices at retail with
more information is always better.
Senator Sullivan. Great. Mr. Prout.
Mr. Prout. Thank you, Senator Sullivan. Yes, country of
origin labeling is extremely important, especially when it
comes to not only frozen live crab products but frozen cooked
crab products.
Senator Sullivan. By the way, can you--because I tried to
explain this to all my colleagues here. It took a while. You
can do it probably in much better time. Why is the cooked issue
important as well?
Mr. Prout. It is one of the methods used to circumvent
that. There is just different labeling enforcement for cooked
products versus raw products that come into the state.
And ensuring that we have a country of origin labeling that
also applies to the cooked product of the crab would help
immensely in getting that applied the right way and letting
people know what is actually going on for that country of
origin.
And then as far as the Chinese fish and the food served, we
just want to--we want--you know, Alaskan freedom fish is what
we want.
Senator Sullivan. We want freedom fish to our service
members, not commie fish to our service members.
Mr. Prout. Absolutely.
Senator Sullivan. Mr. Saumweber, you agree with those
bills? Because I am going to re-attack them and hopefully get
these over the goal line.
Mr. Saumweber. Thank you. I absolutely believe that country
of origin labeling is a great idea. And also absolutely believe
that the U.S. Government should be using its purchasing power
in whatever way it can to support sustainability and
traceability in our supply chains.
Senator Sullivan. I mean, the idea that we are buying--that
our military is buying Chinese fish to serving to Soldiers, and
Marines, and Sailors is just dumb, right. And I have no idea
why the Speaker of the House last year stripped my bill out of
the NDAA, but we will re-attack that.
Mr. Prout, let me go back to you on the Russian fishing
industry and unfair competition with regard to U.S. fishermen,
particularly in the crab area. You know, there was--I have
stated it publicly. I don't have it in front of me. But there
was a senior Russian official who publicly declared, we know we
are at war with American fishermen, right. Just said it, right.
And their government is giving them resources, subsidies
for their fleet. How did the banning of the importation of
Russian seafood into U.S. markets help our crabbers, but helped
the U.S. industry, all of our fishing communities, whether in
Texas or Delaware, in Alaska? Help--and did that help your
ability then to sell to the biggest market in the world, which
is our market?
And what more should we be doing both with regard to the
unfair competition with China and Russian fleets? We have
talked about their IUU practices, their slave labor practices.
Another thing that happens is their governments heavily
subsidize their fleet. We don't do that--hardly at all here.
So what are the other things we can be doing, and how has
the ban on Russian seafood into the U.S. market, including the
Chinese communist loophole that we also shut down, helped your
industry and other fishermen throughout the country?
Mr. Prout. Yes. Thank you, Senator Sullivan. So the effect
of IUU and the importation of it into our markets has been
nothing short of devastating. When Russia had originally--when
they flood the market with illegal underpriced crab, or any
other seafood commodity for that matter, it puts downward
pressure on our prices and destabilizes the processors. So
processors within Alaska especially rely on numerous revenue
sources of different seafood commodities from multiple----
Senator Sullivan. And that is particularly the case in
Kodiak, right?
Mr. Prout. Correct. Yes, absolutely. Hundreds of millions
of pounds of different--of products coming across the dock, and
they use that method to stay afloat, kind of diversifying their
portfolio a little bit.
But if they take a major loss on crab or salmon, it really
destabilizes their efforts and it threatens their whole
operation. And additionally, fishermen then are potentially
looking at a loss of a place to deliver because the processor
is unable to compete with the importation of IUU products just
due to the price difference that is associated with it.
Senator Sullivan. It is hard to compete against slave
labor.
Mr. Prout. It is. I mean, I will just go ahead and say I do
work for my father, though, so they have a little bit
associated with that.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Prout. But also, the new--the program----
Senator Sullivan. We might have to strike that lie.
[Laughter.]
Senator Sullivan. If your dad is watching, we apologize.
Mr. Prout. But as far as the impact of your efforts, it has
had a tremendous impact of banning the importation of Russian
crab. One of the most notable products in Alaska, of course, is
the Alaskan Red King Crab.
And this past season, myself and family, and all the rest
of the fishermen who participated in that experienced, record
prices at the dock for their catch. And I can confidently say
that I believe that wouldn't have taken effect had there still
been a large importation of Russian product coming into the
domestic market.
So, your efforts to stem the flow of the IUU has been very
obvious to my family and many of the fishermen within Alaska.
Senator Sullivan. And in terms of Government policies that
we can undertake to combat IUU fishing, the heavily subsidized
fleet--the one thing I want to talk about briefly, and actually
I will save it for the next round because I want to be
respectful to my colleague here. Well, I will just mention it.
And I am going to really, really compliment some of these
reporters. This is Ian Urbina who wrote this incredible New
Yorker piece, ``The Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat,'' and it
was all about Chinese IUUs. It is really detailed investigative
reporting. I would like to submit that for the record for this
hearing. Without objection.
[The information referred to follows:]
The New Yorker
THE CRIMES BEHIND THE SEAFOOD YOU EAT
China has invested heavily in an armada of far-flung fishing vessels,
in part to extend its global influence. This maritime expansion has
come at grave human cost.
By Ian Urbina
October 9, 2023
DANIEL ARITONANG GRADUATED from high school in May, 2018, hoping to
find a job.
Short and lithe, he lived in the coastal village of Batu Lungun,
Indonesia, where his father owned an auto shop. Aritonang spent his
free time rebuilding engines in the shop, occasionally sneaking away to
drag-race his blue Yamaha motorcycle on the village's back roads. He
had worked hard in school but was a bit of a class clown, always
pranking the girls. ``He was full of laughter and smiles,'' his high-
school math teacher, Leni Apriyunita, said. His mother brought homemade
bread to his teachers' houses, trying to help him get good grades and
secure work; his father's shop was failing, and the family needed
money. But, when Aritonang finished high school, youth unemployment was
above sixteen per cent. He considered joining the police academy, and
applied for positions at nearby plastics and textile factories, but
never got an offer, disappointing his parents. He wrote on Instagram,
``I know I failed, but I keep trying to make them happy.'' His
childhood friend Hengki Anhar was also scrambling to find work. ``They
asked for my skills,'' he said recently, of potential employers. ``But,
to be honest, I don't have any.''
At the time, many villagers who had taken jobs as deckhands on
foreign fishing ships were returning with enough money to buy
motorcycles and houses. Anhar suggested that he and Aritonang go to
sea, too, and Aritonang agreed, saying, ``As long as we're together.''
He intended to use the money to fix up his parents' house or maybe to
start a business. Firmandes Nugraha, another friend, worried that
Aritonang was not cut out for hard labor. ``We took a running test, and
he was too easily exhausted,'' he said. But Aritonang wouldn't be
dissuaded. A year later, in July, he and Anhar travelled to the port
City of Tegal, and applied for work through a manning agency called PT
Bahtera Agung Samudra. (The agency seems not to have a license to
operate, according to government records, and did not respond to
requests for comment.) They handed over their passports, copies of
their birth certificates, and bank documents. At eighteen, Aritonang
was still young enough that the agency required him to provide a letter
of parental consent. He posted a picture of himself and other recruits,
writing, ``Just a bunch of common folk who hope for a successful and
bright future.''
For the next two months, Aritonang and Anhar waited in Tegal for a
ship assignment. Aritonang asked Nugraha to borrow money for them,
saying that the pair were struggling to buy food.
Nugraha urged him to come home: ``You don't even know how to
swim.'' Aritonang refused.
``There's no other choice,'' he wrote, in a text. Finally, on
September 2, 2019, Aritonang and Anhar were flown to Busan, South
Korea, to board what they thought would be a Korean ship. But when they
got to the port they were told to climb aboard a Chinese vessel--a
rusty, white-and-red-keeled squid ship called the Zhen Fa 7.
Satellite data from Global Fishing Watch show about a thousand
ships from China's distant-water fishing fleet on September 2, 2019.
That day, the ship set out across the Pacific.
Aritonang had just joined what may be the largest maritime
operation the world has ever known.
In the past few decades, partly in an effort to project its
influence abroad, China has dramatically expanded its distant-water
fishing fleet. Chinese firms now own or operate terminals in ninety-
five foreign ports. China estimates that it has twenty-seven hundred
distant-water fishing ships, though this figure does not include
vessels in contested waters; public records and satellite imaging
suggest that the fleet may be closer to sixty-five hundred ships. (The
U.S. and the E.U., by contrast, have fewer than three hundred distant-
water fishing vessels each.) Some ships that appear to be fishing
vessels press territorial claims in contested waters, including in the
South China Sea and around Taiwan. ``This may look like a fishing
fleet, but, in certain places, it's also serving military purposes,''
Ian Ralby, who runs I.R. Consilium, a maritime-security firm, told me.
China's preeminence at sea has come at a cost. The country is largely
unresponsive to international laws, and its fleet is the worst
perpetrator of illegal fishing in the world, helping drive species to
the brink of extinction. Its ships are also rife with labor
trafficking, debt bondage, violence, criminal neglect, and death. ``The
human-rights abuses on these ships are happening on an industrial and
global scale,'' Steve Trent, the C.E.O. of the Environmental Justice
Foundation, said.
It took a little more than three months for the Zhen Fa 7 to cross
the ocean and anchor near the Galapagos Islands. A squid ship is a
bustling, bright, messy place. The scene on deck looks like a
mechanic's garage where an oil change has gone terribly wrong. Scores
of fishing lines extend into the water, each bearing specialized hooks
operated by automated reels. When they pull a squid on board, it
squirts warm, viscous ink, which coats the walls and floors. Deep-sea
squid have high levels of ammonia, which they use for buoyancy, and a
smell hangs in the air. The hardest labor generally happens at night,
from 5 p.m. until 7 a.m. Hundreds of bowling-ball-size light bulbs hang
on racks on both sides of the vessel, enticing the squid up from the
depths. The blinding glow of the bulbs, visible more than a hundred
miles away, makes the surrounding blackness feel otherworldly. ``Our
minds got tested,'' Anhar said.
The captain's quarters were on the uppermost deck; the Chinese
officers slept on the level below him, and the Chinese deckhands under
that. The Indonesian workers occupied the bowels of the ship. Aritonang
and Anhar lived in cramped cabins with bunk beds. Clotheslines of
drying socks and towels lined the walls, and beer bottles littered the
floor. The Indonesians were paid about three thousand dollars a year,
plus a twenty-dollar bonus for every ton of squid caught. Once a week,
a list of each man's catch was posted in the mess hall to encourage the
crew to work harder.
Sometimes the officers patted the Indonesian deckhands on their
heads, as though they were children. When angry, they insulted or
struck them. The foreman slapped and punched workers for mistakes.
``It's like we don't have any dignity,'' Anhar said.
The ship was rarely near enough to land to get cell reception, and,
in any case, most deckhands didn't have phones that would work abroad.
Chinese crew members were occasionally allowed to use a satellite phone
on the ship's bridge. But when Aritonang and other Indonesians asked to
call home the captain refused. After a couple of weeks on board, a
deckhand named Rahman Finando got up the nerve to ask whether he could
go home. The captain said no. A few days later, another deckhand,
Mangihut Mejawati, found a group of Chinese officers and deckhands
beating Finando, to punish him for asking to leave. ``They beat his
whole body and stepped on him,'' Mejawati said. The other deckhands
yelled for them to stop, and several jumped into the fray. Eventually,
the violence ended, but the deckhands remained trapped on the ship.
Mejawati told me, ``It's like we're in a cage.''
ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS before Columbus, China dominated the seas.
In the fifteenth century, China's emperor dispatched a fleet of
``treasure ships'' that included warships, transports for cavalry
horses, and merchant vessels carrying silk and porcelain to voyage
around the Indian Ocean. They were some of the largest wooden ships
ever built, with innovations like balanced rudders and bulwarked
compartments that predated European technology by centuries. The
armada's size was not surpassed until the navies of the First World
War. But during the Ming dynasty political instability led China to
turn inward. By the mid-sixteenth century, sailing on a multi-masted
ship had become a crime. In docking its fleet, China lost its global
preeminence. As Louise Levathes, the author of ``When China Ruled the
Seas,'' told me, ``The period of China's greatest outward expansion was
followed by the period of its greatest isolation.''
For most of the twentieth century, distant-water fishing--much of
which takes place on the high seas--was dominated by the Soviet Union,
Japan, and Spain. But the collapse of the U.S.S.R., coupled with
expanding environmental and labor regulations, caused these fleets to
shrink. Since the sixties, though, there have been advances in
refrigeration, satellite technology, engine efficiency, and radar.
Vessels can now stay at sea for more than two years without returning
to land. As a result, global seafood consumption has risen fivefold.
Squid fishing, or jigging, in particular, has grown with American
appetites. Until the early seventies, Americans consumed squid in tiny
amounts, mostly at niche restaurants on the coasts.
But as overfishing depleted fish stocks the Federal government
encouraged fishermen to shift their focus to squid, whose stocks were
still robust. In 1974, a business-school student named Paul Kalikstein
published a master's thesis asserting that Americans would prefer squid
if it were breaded and fried. Promoters suggested calling it
``calamari,'' the Italian word, which made it sound more like a gourmet
dish. (``Squid'' is thought to be a sailors' variant of ``squirt,'' a
reference to squid ink.) By the nineties, chain restaurants across the
Midwest were serving squid. Today, Americans eat a hundred thousand
tons a year.
China launched its first distant-water fishing fleet in 1985, when
a state-owned company called the China National Fisheries Corporation
dispatched thirteen trawlers to the coast of Guinea-Bissau. China had
been fishing its own coastal waters aggressively. Since the sixties,
its seafood biomass has dropped by ninety per cent. Zhang Yanxi, the
general manager of the company, argued that joining ``the ranks of the
world's offshore fisheries powers'' would make the country money,
create jobs, feed its population, and safeguard its maritime rights.
The government held a grand farewell ceremony for the launch of the
first ships, with more than a thousand attendees, including Communist
Party elites. A promotional video described the crew as ``two hundred
and twenty-three brave pioneers cutting through the waves.''
Since then, China has invested heavily in its fleet. The country
now catches more than five billion pounds of seafood a year through
distant-water fishing, the biggest portion of it squid. China's seafood
industry, which is estimated to be worth more than thirty-five billion
dollars, accounts for a fifth of the international trade, and has
helped create fifteen million jobs. The Chinese state owns much of the
industry--including some twenty per cent of its squid ships--and
oversees the rest through the Overseas Fisheries Association. Today,
the Nation consumes more than a third of the world's fish.
China's fleet has also expanded the government's international
influence. The country has built scores of ports as part of its Belt
and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure program that has, at
times, made it the largest financier of development in South America,
sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. These ports allow it to shirk taxes
and avoid meddling inspectors. The investments also buy its government
influence. In 2007, China loaned Sri Lanka more than three hundred
million dollars to pay for the construction of a port. (A Chinese
state-owned company built it.) In 2017, Sri Lanka, on the verge of
defaulting on the loan, was forced to strike a deal granting China
control over the port and its environs for ninety-nine years.
Military analysts believe that China uses its fleet for
surveillance. In 2017, the country passed a law requiring private
citizens and businesses to support Chinese intelligence efforts. Ports
employ a digital logistics platform called logink, which tracks the
movement of ships and goods in the surrounding area--including,
possibly, American military cargo. Michael Wessel, a member of the
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told me, ``This is
really dangerous information for the U.S. to be handing over.'' (The
Chinese Communist Party has dismissed these concerns, saying, ``It is
no secret that the U.S. has become increasingly paranoid about anything
related to China.'')
China also pushes its fleet into contested waters. ``China likely
believes that, in time, the presence of its distant-water fleet will
convert into some degree of sovereign control over those waters,''
Ralby, the maritime-security specialist, told me. Some of its ships are
disguised as fishing vessels but actually form what experts call a
``maritime militia.'' According to research collected by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, the Chinese government pays the
owners of some of these ships forty-five hundred dollars a day to
remain in contested areas for most of the year.
Satellite data show that, last year, several dozen ships illegally
fished in Taiwanese waters and that there were two hundred ships in
disputed portions of the South China Sea. The ships help execute what a
recent Congressional Research Service study called '' `gray zone'
operations that use coercion short of war.'' They escort Chinese oil-
and-gas survey vessels, deliver supplies, and obstruct foreign ships.
Sometimes these vessels are called into action. In December, 2018,
the Filipino government began to repair a runway and build a beaching
ramp on Thitu Island, a piece of land claimed by both the Philippines
and China. More than ninety Chinese ships amassed along its coast,
delaying the construction. In 2019, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a
Filipino boat anchored at Reed Bank, a disputed region in the South
China Sea that is rich in oil reserves. Zhou Bo, a retired Chinese
senior colonel, recently warned that these sorts of clashes could spark
a war between the U.S. and China. (The Chinese government declined to
comment on these matters. But Mao Ning, a spokesperson for its Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, has previously defended her country's right to
uphold ``China's territorial sovereignty and maritime order.'') Greg
Poling, a senior fellow at C.S.I.S., noted that taking ownership of
contested waters is part of the same project as assuming control of
Taiwan. ``The goal with these fishing ships is to reclaim `lost
territory' and restore China's former glory,'' he said.
CHINA'S DISTANT-WATER FLEET is opaque. The country divulges little
information about its vessels, and some stay at sea for more than a
year at a time, making them difficult to inspect. I spent the past four
years, backed by a team of investigators working for a journalism
nonprofit I run called the Outlaw Ocean Project, visiting the fleet's
ships in their largest fishing grounds: near the Galapagos Islands;
near the Falkland Islands; off the coast of the Gambia; and in the Sea
of Japan, near the Korean Peninsula. When permitted, I boarded vessels
to talk to the crew or pulled alongside them to interview officers by
radio. In many instances, the Chinese ships got spooked, pulled up
their gear, and fled. When this happened, I trailed them in a skiff to
get close enough to throw aboard plastic bottles weighed down with
rice, containing a pen, cigarettes, hard candy, and interview
questions. On several occasions, deckhands wrote replies, providing
phone numbers for family back home, and then threw the bottles back
into the water. The reporting included interviews with their family
members, and with two dozen additional crew members.
China bolsters its fleet with more than seven billion dollars a
year in subsidies, as well as with logistical, security, and
intelligence support. For instance, it sends vessels updates on the
size and location of the world's major squid colonies, allowing the
ships to coordinate their fishing. In 2022, I watched about two hundred
and sixty ships jigging a patch of sea west of the Galapagos. The
armada suddenly raised anchor and, in near simultaneity, moved a
hundred miles to the southeast. Ted Schmitt, the director of Skylight,
a maritime-monitoring program, told me that this is unusual: ``Fishing
vessels from most other countries wouldn't work together on this
scale.'' In July of that year, I pulled alongside the Zhe Pu Yuan 98, a
squid ship that doubles as a floating hospital to treat deckhands
without bringing them to shore. ``When workers are sick, they will come
to our ship,'' the captain told me, by radio. The boat typically
carried a doctor and maintained an operating room, a machine for
running blood tests, and videoconferencing capabilities for consulting
with doctors back in China. Its predecessor had treated more than three
hundred people in the previous five years.
In February, 2022, I went with the conservation group Sea Shepherd
and a documentary filmmaker named Ed Ou, who also translated on the
trip, to the high seas near the Falkland Islands, and boarded a Chinese
squid jigger there. The captain gave permission for me and a couple of
my team members to roam freely as long as I didn't name his vessel. He
remained on the bridge but had an officer shadow me wherever I went.
The mood on the ship felt like that of a watery purgatory. The crew was
made up of thirty-one men; their teeth were yellowed from chain-
smoking, their skin sallow, their hands torn and spongy from sharp gear
and perpetual wetness. The scene recalled an observation of the
Scythian philosopher Anacharsis, who divided people into three
categories: the living, the dead, and those at sea.
When squid latched on to a line, an automated reel flipped them
onto a metal rack. Deckhands then tossed them into plastic baskets for
sorting. The baskets often overflowed, and the floor filled shin-deep
with squid. The squid became translucent in their final moments,
sometimes hissing or coughing. (Their stink and stain are virtually
impossible to wash from clothes. Sometimes crew members tie their dirty
garments into a rope, up to twenty feet long, and drag it for hours in
the water behind the ship.) Below deck, crew members weighed, sorted,
and packed the squid for freezing. They prepared bait by carving squid
up, separating the tongues from inside the beaks. In the galley, the
cook noted that his ship had no fresh fruits or vegetables and asked
whether we might be able to donate some from our ship.
We spoke to two Chinese deckhands who were wearing bright-orange
life vests. Neither wanted his name used, for fear of retaliation. One
man was twenty-eight, the other eighteen. It was their first time at
sea, and they had signed two-year contracts. They earned about ten
thousand dollars a year, but, for every day taken off work because of
sickness or injury, they were docked two days' pay. The older deckhand
recounted watching a fishing weight injure another crew member's arm.
At one point, the officer following us was called away. The older
deckhand then said that many of the crew were being held there against
their will. ``It's like being isolated from the world and far from
modern life,'' he said. ``Many of us had our documents taken. They
won't give them back.
Can we ask you to help us?'' He added, ``It's impossible to be
happy, because we work many hours every day. We don't want to be here,
but we are forced to stay.'' He estimated that eighty per cent of the
other men would leave if they were allowed.
Looking nervous, the younger deckhand waved us into a dark hallway.
He began typing on his cell phone. ``I can't disclose too much right
now given I still need to work on the vessel, if I give too much
information it might potentially create issues on board,'' he wrote. He
gave me a phone number for his family and asked me to contact them.
``Can you get us to the embassy in Argentina?'' he asked. Just then, my
minder rounded the corner, and the deckhand walked away. Minutes later,
my team members and I were ushered off the ship.
When I returned to shore, I contacted his family. ``My heart really
aches,'' his older sister, a math teacher in Fujian, said, after
hearing of her brother's situation. Her family had disagreed with his
decision to go to sea, but he was persistent. She hadn't known that he
was being held captive, and felt helpless to free him. ``He's really
too young,'' she said. ``And now there is nothing we can do, because
he's so far away.''
IN JUNE, 2020, the Zhen Fa 7 travelled to a pocket of ocean between
the Galapagos and mainland Ecuador. The ship was owned by Rongcheng
Wangdao Deep-Sea Aquatic Products, a midsize company based in Shandong.
On board, Aritonang had slowly got used to his new life. The captain
found out that he had mechanical experience and moved him to the engine
room, where the work was slightly less taxing. For meals, the cook
prepared pots of rice mixed with bits of fish. The Indonesians were
each issued two boxes of instant noodles a week. If they wanted any
other food--or coffee, alcohol, or cigarettes--the cost could be
deducted from their salaries. Crew photos show deckhands posing with
their catch and gathering for beers to celebrate.
One of Aritonang's friends on board was named Heri Kusmanto. ``When
we boarded the ship in the first weeks, Heri was a lively person,''
Mejawati said. ``He chatted, sang, and joked with all of us.''
Kusmanto's job was to carry hundred-pound baskets of squid down to the
refrigerated hold.
He sometimes made mistakes, and that earned him beatings. ``He did
not dare fight back,'' a deckhand named Fikran told me. ``He would just
stay quiet and stand still.'' The ship's cook often struck Kusmanto, so
he avoided him by eating plain white rice in the kitchen when the cook
wasn't around. Kusmanto soon got sick. He lost his appetite and stopped
speaking, communicating mostly through gestures. ``He was like a
toddler,'' Mejawati said. Then Kusmanto's legs and feet swelled and
started to ache.
Kusmanto seemed to be suffering from beriberi, a disease caused by
a deficiency of Vitamin B1, or thiamine. Its name derives
from a Sinhalese word, beri, meaning ``weak'' or ``I cannot.'' It is
often caused by a diet consisting mainly of white rice, instant
noodles, or wheat flour. Symptoms include tingling, burning, numbness,
difficulty breathing, lethargy, chest pain, dizziness, confusion, and
severe swelling. Like scurvy, beriberi was common among nineteenth-
century sailors. It also has a history in prisons, asylums, and migrant
camps. If untreated, it can be fatal.
Beriberi is becoming prevalent on Chinese vessels in part because
ships stay so long at sea, a trend facilitated by transshipment, which
allows vessels to offload their catch to refrigerated carriers without
returning to shore. Chinese ships typically stock rice and instant
noodles for extended trips, because they are cheap and slow to spoil.
But the body requires more B1 when carbohydrates are
consumed in large amounts and during periods of intense exertion. Ship
cooks also mix rice or noodles with raw or fermented fish, and
supplement meals with coffee and tea, all of which are high in
thiaminase, which destroys B1, exacerbating the issue.
Beriberi is often an indication of conditions of captivity, because
it is avoidable and easily reversed.
Some countries (though not China) mandate that rice and flour be
supplemented with B1. The illness can also be treated with
vitamins, and when B1 is administered intravenously patients
typically recover within twenty-four hours. But few Chinese ships seem
to carry B1 supplements.
In many cases, captains refuse to bring sick crew members to shore,
likely because the process would entail losing time and incurring labor
costs. Swells can make it dangerous for large ships to get close to
each other in order to transfer crew members. One video I reviewed
shows a man being put inside a fishing net and sent hundreds of feet
along a zip line, several stories above the open ocean, to get on
another ship. My team and I found two dozen cases of workers on Chinese
vessels between 2013 and 2021 who suffered from symptoms associated
with beriberi; at least fifteen died.
Victor Weedn, a forensic pathologist in Washington, D.C., told me
that allowing workers to die from beriberi would, in the U.S.,
constitute criminal neglect. ``Slow-motion murder is still murder,'' he
said.
The contract typically used by Kusmanto's manning agency stipulated
heavy financial penalties for workers and their families if they quit
prematurely. It also allowed the company to take workers' identity
papers, including their passports, during the recruitment process, and
to keep the documents if they failed to pay a fine for leaving early--
provisions that violate laws in the U.S. and Indonesia. Still, as
Kusmanto's condition worsened, his Indonesian crewmates asked whether
he could go home. The captain refused. (Rongcheng Wangdao denied
wrongdoing. The captains of Chinese ships in this piece could not be
identified for comment. A spokesman for the manning agency blamed
Kusmanto for his illness, writing, ``When on the ship, he didn't want
to take a shower, he didn't want to eat, and he only ate instant
noodles.'')
The ship may have been fishing illegally at the time, possibly
complicating Kusmanto's situation.
During this period, according to an unpublished intelligence report
compiled by the U.S. government, the Zhen Fa 7 turned off its location
transponder several times, in violation of Chinese law. This generally
occurred when the ship was close to Ecuadorian and Peruvian waters;
captains often go dark to fish in other countries' waters, like those
of Ecuador, where Chinese ships are typically forbidden.
On June 21st, the ship disappeared for eight days, between Peruvian
and Ecuadorian waters.
On July 28th, it disappeared for fifteen days, near the Galapagos.
On August 14th, it disappeared again, near Ecuadorian waters.
``Short of catching them in the act, this is as close as you can
get to firm evidence,'' Michael J. Fitzpatrick, the U.S. Ambassador to
Ecuador, told me. (Rongcheng Wangdao's vessels have been known to fish
in unauthorized areas; one of the Zhen Fa 7's sister ships was fined
for unlawfully entering Peruvian waters in 2017, and another was found
illicitly fishing off the coast of North Korea. The company declined to
comment on this matter.) Transferring Kusmanto to another vessel would
have required disclosing the Zhen Fa 7's location, which might have
been incriminating.
By early August, Kusmanto had become disoriented. Other deckhands
demanded that he be given medical attention. Eventually, the captain
relented, and transferred him to another ship, which carried him to
port in Lima. He was taken to a hospital, where he recovered;
afterward, he was flown home. (Kusmanto could not be reached for
comment.) Meanwhile, the rest of the crew, which had by then been at
sea for a year, felt a growing sense of isolation. ``They had initially
told us that we would be sailing for eight months, and then they would
land the ship,'' Anhar said. ``The fact was we never landed anywhere.''
CHINA DOES MORE illegal fishing than any other country, according
to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Operating on the high seas is expensive, and there is virtually no law-
enforcement presence--which encourages fishing in forbidden regions and
using prohibited techniques to gain a competitive advantage. Aggressive
fishing comes at an environmental cost. A third of the world's stocks
are overfished. Squid stocks, once robust, have declined dramatically.
More than thirty countries, including China, have banned shark finning,
but the practice persists. Chinese ships often catch hammerhead,
oceanic whitetip, and blue sharks so that their fins can be used in
shark-fin soup. In 2017, Ecuadorian authorities discovered at least six
thousand illegally caught sharks on board a single reefer. Other marine
species are being decimated, too. Vessels fishing for totoaba, a large
fish whose swim bladder is highly prized in Chinese medicine, use nets
that inadvertently entangle and drown vaquita porpoises, which live
only in Mexico's Sea of Cortez. Researchers estimate that, as a result,
there are now only some ten vaquitas left in existence. China has the
world's largest fleet of bottom trawlers, which drag nets across the
seafloor, levelling coral reefs. Marine sediment stores large amounts
of carbon, and, according to a recent study in Nature, bottom trawlers
release almost a billion and a half tons of carbon dioxide each year--
as much as that released by the entire aviation industry. China's
illicit fishing practices also rob poorer countries of their own
resources. Off the coast of West Africa, where China maintains a fleet
of hundreds of ships, illegal fishing has been estimated to cost the
region more than nine billion dollars a year.
The world's largest concentration of illegal fishing ships may be a
fleet of Chinese squidders in North Korean waters. In 2017, in response
to North Korea's nuclear-and ballistic-missile tests, the United
Nations Security Council, with apparent backing from China, imposed
sanctions intended to deprive Kim Jong Un's government of foreign
currency, in part by blocking it from selling fishing rights, a major
source of income. But, according to the U.N., Pyongyang has continued
to earn foreign currency--a hundred and twenty million dollars in 2018
alone--by granting illicit rights, predominantly to Chinese fishermen.
An advertisement on the Chinese Website Zhihu offers permits issued by
the North Korean military for ``no risk high yield'' fishing with no
catch limits: ``Looking forward to a win-win cooperation.'' China seems
unable or unwilling to enforce sanctions on its ally.
Chinese boats have contributed to a decline in the region's squid
stock; catches are down by roughly seventy per cent since 2003. Local
fishermen have been unable to compete. ``We will be ruined,'' Haesoo
Kim, the leader of an association of South Korean fishermen on Ulleung
Island, which I visited in May, 2019, said. North Korean fishing
captains have been forced to head farther from shore, where their ships
get caught in storms or succumb to engine failure, and crew members
face starvation, freezing temperatures, and drowning. Roughly a hundred
small North Korean fishing boats wash up on Japanese shores annually,
some of them carrying the corpses of fishermen. Chinese boats in these
waters are also known for ramming patrol vessels. In 2016, Chinese
fishermen rammed and sank a South Korean cutter in the Yellow Sea. In
another incident, the South Korean Coast Guard opened fire on more than
two dozen Chinese ships that rushed at its vessels.
In 2019, I went with a South Korean squid ship to the sea border
between North Korea and South Korea. It didn't take us long to find a
convoy of Chinese squidders headed into North Korean waters. We fell in
alongside them and launched a drone to capture their identification
numbers.
One of the Chinese captains blared his horn and flashed his
lights--warning signs in maritime protocol. Since we were in South
Korean waters and at a legal distance, our captain stayed his course.
The Chinese captain then abruptly cut toward us, on a collision
trajectory. Our captain veered away when the Chinese vessel was only
thirty feet off.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told me that ``China has
consistently and conscientiously enforced the resolutions of the
Security Council relating to North Korea,'' and added that the country
has ``consistently punished'' illegal fishing. But the Ministry neither
admitted nor denied that China sends boats into North Korean waters. In
2020, the nonprofit Global Fishing Watch used satellite data to reveal
that hundreds of Chinese squid ships were routinely fishing in North
Korean waters. By 2022, China had cut down this illegal armada by
seventy-five per cent from its peak. Still, in unregulated waters, the
hours worked by the fleet have increased, and the size of its catch has
only grown.
SHORTLY AFTER New Year's Day, 2021, the Zhen Fa 7 rounded the tip
of South America and stopped briefly in Chilean waters, close enough to
shore to get cell-phone reception. Aritonang went to the bridge and,
through pantomime and broken English, asked one of the officers whether
he could borrow his phone. The officer indicated that it would cost
him, rubbing his forefinger and thumb together. Aritonang ran below
deck, sold some of his cigarettes and snacks to other deckhands,
borrowed whatever money he could, and came back with the equivalent of
about thirteen dollars, which bought him five minutes. He dialed his
parents' house, and his mother answered, excited to hear his voice. He
told her that he would be home by May and asked to speak to his father.
``He's resting,'' she told him. In fact, he had died of a heart attack
several days earlier, but Aritonang's mother didn't want to upset her
son while he was at sea. She later told their pastor that she was
looking forward to Aritonang's return. ``He wants to build a house for
us,'' she said.
Soon afterward, the ship dropped anchor in the Blue Hole, an area
near the Falkland Islands, where ongoing territorial disputes between
the U.K. and Argentina provide a gap in maritime enforcement that ships
can exploit. Aritonang grew homesick, staying in his room and eating
mostly instant noodles. ``He seemed to become sad and tired,'' Fikran
said. That January, Aritonang fell ill with beriberi. The whites of his
eyes turned yellow, and his legs became swollen. ``Daniel was in pretty
bad shape,'' Anhar told me. The captain refused to get him medical
attention. ``There was still a lot of squid,'' Anhar said. ``We were in
the middle of an operation.'' In February, the crew unloaded their
catch onto a reefer that carried it to Mauritius. But, for reasons that
remain unclear, the captain refused to send Aritonang to shore as well.
Eventually, Aritonang could no longer walk. The Indonesian crew
went to the bridge again and confronted the captain, threatening to
strike if he didn't get Aritonang medical help. ``We were all against
the captain,'' Anhar said. Finally, the captain acquiesced, and, on
March 2nd, transferred Aritonang to a fuel tanker, the Marlin, which
agreed to carry him to Montevideo, Uruguay. The Marlin's crew brought
him to a service area off the coast, where a skiff picked him up and
took him to the port. A maritime agency representing Rongcheng Wangdao
in Uruguay called a local hospital, and ambulance workers took him
there.
Jesica Reyes, who is thirty-six, is one of the few interpreters of
Indonesian in Montevideo. She taught herself the language while working
at an Internet cafe that was popular among Indonesian crews; they
called her Mbak, meaning ``Miss'' or ``big sister.'' From 2013 to 2021,
fishing ships, most of them Chinese, disembarked a dead body in
Montevideo roughly every month and a half.
Over a recent dinner, Reyes told me about hundreds of deckhands in
need whom she had assisted.
She described one deckhand who died from a tooth infection because
his captain wouldn't bring him to shore. She told me of another ailing
deckhand whose agency neglected to take him to a hospital, keeping him
in a hotel room while his condition deteriorated; he eventually died.
On March, 7, 2021, Reyes was asked by the maritime agency to go to
the emergency room to help doctors communicate with Aritonang; she was
told that he had a stomach ache. When he arrived at the hospital,
however, his whole body was swollen, and she could see bruises around
his eyes and neck. He whispered to her that he had been tied by the
neck. (Other deckhands later told me that they hadn't seen this happen,
and were unsure when he sustained the injuries.) Reyes called the
maritime agency and said, ``If this is a stomach ache. . .You're not
looking at this young man.
He is all messed up!'' She took photographs of his condition,
before doctors asked her to stop, because she was alarmed.
In the emergency room, physicians administered intravenous fluids.
Aritonang, crying and shaking, asked Reyes, ``Where are my friends?''
He whispered, ``I'm scared.'' Aritonang was pronounced dead the
following morning. ``I was angry,'' Reyes told me. The deckhands I
reached were furious. Mejawati said, ``We really hope that, if it's
possible, the captain and all the supervisors can be captured, charged,
or jailed.'' Anhar, Aritonang's best friend, found out about his death
only after disembarking from the Zhen Fa 7 in Singapore, that May. ``We
were devastated,'' he said, of the crew members. When we reached him,
he was still carrying a suitcase full of Aritonang's clothes that he'd
promised to take home for him.
FISHING IS ONE of the world's deadliest jobs--a recent study
estimates that more than a hundred thousand workers die every year--and
Chinese ships are among the most brutal.
Recruiters often target desperate men in inland China and in poor
countries. ``If you are in debt, your family has shunned you, you don't
want to be looked down on, turn off your phone and stay far away from
land,'' an online advertisement in China reads. Some recruits are lured
with promises of lucrative contracts, according to court documents and
investigations by Chinese news outlets, only to discover that they
incur a series of fees--sometimes amounting to more than a month's
wages--to cover expenses such as travel, job training, crew
certifications, and protective workwear. Often, workers pay these fees
by taking out loans from the manning agencies, creating a form of debt
bondage. Companies confiscate passports and extract fines for leaving
jobs, further trapping workers. And even those who are willing to risk
penalties are sometimes in essence held captive on ships.
For a 2022 report, the Environmental Justice Foundation interviewed
more than a hundred Indonesian crew members and found that roughly
ninety-seven per cent had their documents confiscated or experienced
debt bondage. Occasionally, workers in these conditions manage to alert
authorities. In 2014, twenty-eight African workers disembarked from a
Chinese squidder called the Jia De 1, which was anchored in Montevideo,
and several complained of beatings on board and showed shackle marks on
their ankles. Fifteen crew members were hospitalized. (The company that
owned the ship did not respond to requests for comment.) In 2020,
several Indonesian deckhands reportedly complained about severe
beatings at sea and the presence of a man's body in one of the ship's
freezers. An autopsy revealed that the man had sustained bruises,
scarring, and a spinal injury. Indonesian authorities sentenced several
manning-agency executives to more than a year in prison for labor
trafficking. (The company did not respond to requests for comment.)
In China, these labor abuses are an open secret. A diary kept by
one Chinese deckhand offers an unusually detailed glimpse into this
world. In May, 2013, the deckhand paid a two-hundred-dollar recruitment
fee to a manning agency, which dispatched him to a ship called the Jin
Han Yu 4879.
The crew were told that their first ten days or so on board would
be a trial period, after which they could leave, but the ship stayed at
sea for a hundred and two days. ``You are slaves to work anytime and
anywhere,'' the deckhand wrote in his diary. Officers were served meat
at mealtimes, he said, but deckhands got only bones. ``The bell rings,
you must be up, whether it is day, night, early morning, no matter how
strong the wind, how heavy the rain, there are no Sundays and
holidays.'' (The company that owns the ship did not respond to requests
for comment.)
The broader public in China was forced to reckon with the
conditions on ships when the crew of a squid jigger called the Lu Rong
Yu 2682 mutinied, in 2011. The captain, Li Chengquan, was a ``big,
tall, and bad-tempered man'' who, according to a deckhand, gave a black
eye to a worker who angered him. Rumors began circulating that the
seven-thousand-dollar annual salary that they had been promised was not
guaranteed. Instead, they would earn about four cents per pound of
squid caught--which would amount to far less. Nine crew members took
the captain hostage. In the next five weeks, the ship's crew devolved
into warring factions. Men disappeared at night, a crew member was tied
up and tossed overboard, and someone sabotaged a valve on the ship,
which started letting water in. The crew eventually managed to restore
the ship's communications system and transmit a distress signal,
drawing two Chinese fishing vessels to their aid. Only eleven of the
original thirty-three men made it back to shore. The lead mutineer and
the ship's captain were sentenced to death by the Chinese government.
(The company that owns the ship did not respond to requests for
comment.)
Labor trafficking has also been documented on American, South
Korean, and Thai boats. But China's fleet is arguably the worst
offender, and it has done little to curb violations. Between 2018 and
2022, my team found, China gave more than seventeen million dollars in
subsidies to companies where at least fifty ships seem to have engaged
in fishing crimes or had deaths or injuries on board--some of which
were likely the result of unsafe labor conditions. (The government
declined to comment on this matter, but Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recently said that the fleet operates
``in accordance with laws and regulations,'' and accused the U.S. of
politicizing ``issues that are about fisheries in the name of
environmental protection and human rights.'')
In the past few years, China has made a number of reforms, but they
seem aimed more at quelling dissent than at holding companies
accountable. In 2017, after a Filipino worker died in a knife fight
with some of his Chinese crewmates, the Chinese government created a
Communist Party branch in Chimbote, Peru--the first for fishing
workers--intended to bolster their ``spiritual sustenance.'' Local
police in some Chinese cities have begun using satellite video links to
connect to the bridges of some Chinese vessels. In 2020, when Chinese
crew members on a ship near Peru went on strike, the company contacted
the local police, who explained to the workers that they could come
ashore in Peru and fly back to China, but they would have to pay for
the plane tickets.
``Wouldn't it feel like losing out if you resigned now?'' a police
officer asked. The men returned to work.
AS I REPORTED on these ships, stories of violence and captivity
surfaced even when I wasn't looking for them. This year, I received a
video from 2020 in which two Filipino crew members said that they were
ill but were being prevented from leaving their ship. ``Please rescue
us,'' one pleaded. ``We are already sick here. The captain won't send
us to the hospital.'' Three deckhands died that summer; at least one of
their bodies was thrown overboard. (The manning agency that placed
these workers on the ship, PT Puncak Jaya Samudra, did not respond to
requests for comment. Nor did the company that owns the ship.) On a
trip to Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2020, I met a half-dozen young men who
told me that, in 2019, a young deckhand named Fadhil died on their ship
because the officers had refused to bring him to shore. ``He was
begging to return home, but he was not allowed,'' Ramadhan Sugandhi, a
deckhand, said. (The ship-owning company did not respond to requests
for comment, nor did his manning agency, PT Shafar Abadi Indonesia.)
This past June, a bottle washed ashore near Maldonado, Uruguay,
containing what appeared to be a message from a distressed Chinese
deckhand. ``Hello, I am a crew member of the ship Lu Qing Yuan Yu 765,
and I was locked up by the company,'' it read. ``When you see this
paper, please help me call the police! S.O.S. S.O.S.'' (The owner of
the ship, Qingdao Songhai Fishery, said that the claims were fabricated
by crew members.)
Reyes, the Indonesian translator, put me in touch with Rafly
Maulana Sadad, an Indonesian who, while working on the Lu Rong Yuan Yu
978 two years ago, fell down a flight of stairs and broke his back. He
immediately went back to work pulling nets, then fainted, and woke up
in bed. The captain refused to take him to shore, and he spent the next
five months on the ship, his condition worsening. Sadad's friends
helped him eat and bathe, but he was disoriented and often lay in a
pool of his own urine. ``I was having difficulty speaking,'' Sadad told
me last year. ``I felt like I'd had a stroke or something. I couldn't
really understand anything.'' In August, 2021, the captain dropped
Sadad off in Montevideo, and he spent nine days in the hospital, before
being flown home. (Requests for comment from Rongcheng Rongyuan, which
owns the ship Sadad worked on, and PT Abadi Mandiri International, his
manning agency, went unanswered.) Sadad spoke to me from Indonesia,
where he could walk only with crutches. ``It was a very bitter life
experience,'' he said.
Like the boats that supply them, Chinese processing plants rely on
forced labor. For the past thirty years, the North Korean government
has required citizens to work in factories in Russia and China, and to
put ninety per cent of their earnings--amounting to hundreds of
millions of dollars--into accounts controlled by the state. Laborers
are often subjected to heavy monitoring and strictly limited in their
movements. U.N. sanctions ban such uses of North Korean workers, but,
according to Chinese government estimates, last year as many as eighty
thousand North Korean workers were living in one city in northeastern
China alone. According to a report by the Committee for Human Rights in
North Korea, at least four hundred and fifty of them were working in
seafood plants. The Chinese government has largely scrubbed references
to these workers from the Internet. But, using the search term ``North
Korean beauties,'' my team and I found several videos on Douyin, the
Chinese version of TikTok, that appear to show female seafood-plant
workers, most posted by gawking male employees. One Chinese commenter
observed that the women ``have a strong sense of national identity and
are self-disciplined!'' Another argued, however, that the workers have
no choice but to obey orders, or ``their family members will suffer.''
In the past decade, China has also overseen a crackdown on Uyghurs
and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, a region in northwestern
China, setting up mass detention centers and forcing detainees to work
in cotton fields, on tomato farms, and in polysilicon factories. More
recently, in an effort to disrupt Uyghur communities and find cheap
labor for major industries, the government has relocated millions of
Uyghurs to work for companies across the country. Workers are often
supervised by security guards, in dorms surrounded by barbed wire. By
searching company newsletters, annual reports, and state-media stories,
my team and I found that, in the past five years, thousands of Uyghurs
and other Muslim minorities have been sent to work in seafood-
processing plants. Some are subjected to ``patriotic education''; in a
2021 article, local Party officials said that members of minority
groups working at one seafood plant were a ``typical big family'' and
were learning to deepen their ``education of ethnic unity.'' Laura
Murphy, a professor at Sheffield Hallam University, in the U.K., told
me, ``This is all part of the project to erase Uyghur culture,
identities, religion, and, most certainly, their politics. The goal is
the complete transformation of the entire community.'' (Chinese
officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Uyghur
and North Korean forced labor in the Nation's seafood-processing
industry.)
The U.S. has strict laws forbidding the importation of goods
produced with North Korean or Uyghur labor. The use of such workers in
other industries--for example, in solar-panel manufacturing--has been
documented in recent years, and the U.S. has confiscated a billion
dollars' worth of imported products as a result. We found, however,
that companies employing Uyghurs and North Koreans have recently
exported at least forty-seven thousand tons of seafood, including some
seventeen per cent of all squid sent to the U.S. Shipments went to
dozens of American importers, including ones that supply military bases
and public-school cafeterias. ``These revelations pose a very serious
problem for the entire seafood industry,'' Martina Vandenberg, the
founder and president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center, told me.
China does not welcome reporting on this industry. In 2022, I spent
two weeks on board the Modoc, a former U.S. Navy boat that the
nonprofit Earthrace Conservation uses as a patrol vessel, visiting
Chinese squid ships off the coast of South America. As we were sailing
back to a Galapagos port, an Ecuadorian Navy ship approached us, and an
officer said that our permit to reenter Ecuadorian waters had been
revoked. ``If you do not turn around now, we will board and arrest
you,'' he said.
He told us to sail to another country. We didn't have enough food
and water for the journey. After two days of negotiations, we were
briefly allowed into the port, where armed Ecuadorian officers boarded;
they claimed that the ship's permits had been filed improperly and that
our ship had deviated slightly in its approved course while exiting
national waters. Such violations typically result in nothing more than
a written citation. But, according to Ambassador Fitzpatrick, the
explanation was a bit more complicated. He said that the Chinese
government had contacted several Ecuadorian lawmakers to raise concerns
about the presence of what they depicted as a quasi-military vessel
engaging in covert operations. When I spoke with Juan Carlos Holguin,
the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister at the time, he denied that China was
involved. But Fitzpatrick told me that Quito treads carefully when it
comes to China, in part because Ecuador is deeply in debt to the
country. ``China did not like the Modoc,'' he said. ``But mostly it did
not want more media coverage on its squid fleet.''
THE DAY OF ARITONANG'S DEATH, Reyes filed a report with the
Uruguayan Coast Guard, and showed officers her photographs. ``They
seemed pretty uninterested,'' she said. The following day, a local
coroner conducted an autopsy. ``A situation of physical abuse
emerged,'' the report reads. I sent it to Weedn, the forensic
pathologist, who told me that the body showed signs of violence and
that untreated beriberi seems to have been the cause of death. Nicolas
Potrie, who runs the Indonesian consulate in Montevideo, remembered
getting a call from Mirta Morales, the prosecutor who investigated
Aritonang's case. ``We need to continue trying to figure out what
happened. These marks--everybody saw them,'' Potrie recalled her
saying. (A representative for Rongcheng Wangdao said that the company
had found no evidence of misconduct on the ship: ``There was nothing
regarding your alleged appalling incidents about abuse, violation,
insults to one's character, physical violence or withheld salaries.''
The company said that it had handed the matter over to the China
Overseas Fisheries Association. Questions submitted to the association
went unanswered.)
Potrie pressed for further inquiry, but none seemed forthcoming.
Morales declined to share any information about the case with me. In
March of 2022, I visited Aldo Braida, the president of the Chamber of
Foreign Fishing Agents, which represents companies working with foreign
vessels in Uruguay, at his office in Montevideo. He dismissed the
accounts of mistreatment on Chinese ships that dock in the port as
``fake news,'' claiming, ``There are a lot of lies around this.'' He
told me that, if crew members whose bodies were disembarked in
Montevideo had suffered physical abuse, Uruguayan authorities would
discover it, and that, when you put men in close quarters, fights were
likely to break out. ``We live in a violent society,'' he said.
Uruguay has little incentive to scrutinize China further, because
the country brings lucrative business to the region. In 2018, for
example, a Chinese company that had bought a nearly seventy-acre plot
of land west of Montevideo presented a plan to build a more than two-
hundred-million-dollar ``megaport.'' Local media reported that the port
would be a free-trade zone and include half-mile-long docks, a
shipyard, a fuelling station, and seafood storage and processing
facilities. The Uruguayan government had been pursuing such Chinese
investment for years. The President at the time, Tabare Vazquez,
attempted to sidestep the constitution, which requires a two-thirds
vote by both chambers of the General Assembly, and authorize
construction of the port by executive order.
``There's so much money on the table that politicians start bending
the law to grab at it,'' Milko Schvartzman, a marine researcher based
in Argentina, told me. But, following resistance from the public and
from opposition parties, the plan was called off.
The seafood industry is difficult to police. A large portion of
fish consumed in the U.S. is caught or processed by Chinese companies.
Several laws exist to prevent the U.S. from importing products tainted
by forced labor, including that which is involved in the production of
conflict diamonds and sweatshop goods. But China is not forthcoming
with details about its ships and processing plants. At one point, on a
Chinese ship, a deckhand showed me stacks of frozen catch in white
bags. He explained that they leave the ship names off the bags so that
they can be easily transferred between vessels. This practice allows
seafood companies to hide their ties to ships with criminal histories.
On the bridge of another ship, a Chinese captain opened his logbook,
which is supposed to document his catch. The first two pages had
notations; the rest were blank. ``No one keeps those,'' he said.
Company officials could reverse engineer the information later. Kenneth
Kennedy, a former manager of the anti-forced-labor program at
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that the U.S. government
should block seafood imports from China until American companies can
demonstrate that their supply chains are free of abuse. ``The U.S. is
awash with criminally tainted seafood,'' he said.
These companies included retail chains such as Costco, Kroger, H
Mart, and Safeway.
They also included food-service distributors like Sysco and
Performance Food Group, each servicing hundreds of thousands of
restaurants and cafeterias at colleges, hotels, hospitals, and
government buildings. (These companies did not respond to requests for
comment.)
It's likely that some of the squid Aritonang died catching ended up
on an American plate.
To document the gaps in the system, we followed the supply chain to
show where squid tainted by worker abuse might end up.
First, we tracked the Zhen Fa 7 by satellite, from 2018 to 2022.
During that time, it transferred its catch to seven refrigerated
reefers.
We then tracked the journey of one reefer, the Lu Rong Yuan Yu Yun
177, to China's Shidao port.
It is especially difficult to document where the catch goes once it
gets to port. Arduous in-person tracking is sometimes the only way to
follow its movements.
We hired private investigators in China to track a shipment of
squid from the Lu Rong Yuan Yu Yun 177. They hid in their car at the
port, filming at a distance as workers unloaded the squid and then
packed it into trucks.
They followed the trucks out of the port.
The trucks eventually arrived at a seafood facility owned by a
company called Rongcheng Xinhui Aquatic Products.
We also reviewed the ownership details of the other reefers that
transshipped with the Zhen Fa 7 and found that its squid likely ended
up at five additional processing plants in China.
Two of these plants, owned by Chishan Group, have employed at least
a hundred and seventy workers transferred from Xinjiang, according to
local news reports and corporate newsletters on the company's Website.
(A representative from Rongcheng Haibo, one of the plants, said that
the company ``has never employed any Xinjiang workers.'' A
representative from Shandong Haidu, the other plant, said, ``There is
no use of illegal workers from Xinjiang or other countries, and we
recently passed human-rights audits.'' Chishan Group did not respond to
requests for comment.)
The plants connected to the Zhen Fa 7 then sent large quantities of
their seafood to at least sixty-two American importers.
On April 22nd, Aritonang's body was flown from Montevideo to
Jakarta, then driven, in a wooden casket with a Jesus figurine on top,
to his family home in Batu Lungun. Villagers lined the road to pay
their respects; Aritonang's mother wailed and fainted upon seeing the
casket.
A funeral was soon held, and Aritonang was buried a few feet from
his father, in a cemetery plot not far from his church. His grave
marker consisted of two slats of wood joined to make a cross.
That night, an official from Aritonang's manning agency visited the
family at their home to discuss what locals call a ``peace agreement.''
Anhar said that the family ended up accepting a settlement of some two
hundred million rupiah, or roughly thirteen thousand dollars. Family
members were reluctant to talk about the events on the ship.
Aritonang's brother Beben said that he didn't want his family to get in
trouble and that talking about the case might cause problems for his
mother.
``We, Daniel's family, have made peace with the ship people and
have let him go,'' he said.
Last year, thirteen months after Aritonang's death, I spoke again
to his family by video chat. His mother, Regina Sihombing, sat on a
leopard-print rug in her living room with her son Leonardo.
The room had no furniture and no place to sit other than the floor.
The house had undergone repairs with money from the settlement,
according to the village chief; in the end, it seems, Aritonang had
managed to fix up his parents' home after all. When the conversation
turned to him, his mother began to weep. ``You can see how I am now,''
she said. Leonardo told her, ``Don't be sad. It was his time.''
This piece was produced with contributions from Joe Galvin, Maya
Martin, Susan Ryan, Austin Brush, and Daniel Murphy.
Senator Sullivan. That--there was another really, really
good piece in Politico Magazine. Ian Urbina has just done a
great job in terms of highlighting this. But my point is, to
Senator Blunt Rochester's point earlier, this is such a
unifying issue for America. It should be.
These guys are using forced labor. They are using
unsustainable environmental practices. They are crushing our
seafood coastal communities. They are undermining our allies.
They are ruining the fish stocks of the world. And they are
often using human trafficking.
And then, I mean, you mentioned it, Mr. Prout, the North
Koreans are laundering their seafood. They are using their
money for terrorism. I mean, it sounds like the plot of a bad
James Bond movie, right. I mean, this should be unifying. We
should be making the whole world know about this. I mean, and
it really doesn't get out there. I don't think there is any
American that thinks this is a good idea, that we are importing
Chinese slave labor fish that is putting hardworking American
fishermen and their families out of business.
So, maybe I will just mention for the whole panel, what
more can we be doing to let the world know. This New Yorker
piece--came out in October 9, 2023, which is incredible.
I think the whole country should read this. You would be
shocked at what you guys in Alaska, what our fishermen have to
compete against. You can't compete against slave labor, and
unsustainable fisheries, and cheating, which is what the
Chinese communists do all over the world.
So, what more can we be doing, either to name and shame, as
you said Mr. Poling, or any other things that our Government
can be doing in, you know, coordination with others to get the
word out? Mr. Prout, you want to take that one first?
Mr. Prout. Yes. Thank you, Senator Sullivan. At the end of
the day I think it is just--it comes down to, it is hard to
hard to compete when you play by the rules and your competitor
doesn't, especially at a global scale. So I think we need to
help modernizing. It is plain and simple, modernizing the
fleets of America.
The majority of our crab fleet in Alaska is outdated and
inefficient. Maintenance costs are extremely high to try and
stay up on safety, and any issues that come up from just having
old vessels. I think the average age of the Bering Sea crab
fleet is over 50 years old at this point.
So, anything that can be done to help mitigate those issues
is extremely important. At the same time, looking at new crab
builds, you know, an average crab build right now is between
$10 million and $15 million. That is an extremely difficult
hurdle to overcome when you are looking at trying to modernize
a vessel or modernize your fleet.
So I think Congress could definitely step up and help with
modernization loans, vessel recapitalization programs, as well
as grants and disaster relief to help fishermen who are still
in difficult situations just from the fallout of IUU fishing
and the effect it has had on our domestic markets as of
recently.
Senator Sullivan. Good. Great answer. Mr. Rickard.
Mr. Rickard. I just want to emphasize the importance of
this market to global seafood supply chains around the world.
And how incredible the tool is available by leveraging market
access to change behavior overseas and to draw attention to
these problems.
And so, you know, I found Mr. Prout's testimony about the
actions taken on IUU Russian seafood to be fascinating because
you can see the impact overall of the market and how much that
has changed things.
As you know, the Weaker Force Labor Prevention Act under
its current enforcement has made seafood a priority sector
because the Chinese seafood processing industry can take in
anything. The actual denial of access to this market is how I
think you draw attention to it. And unfortunately, the Federal
Government has not done very much of that.
In a very isolated incidence where we have said in order to
ship to the U.S., you have to meet these certain requirements.
I think they have all been effective, but they have been so
limited in their application that we are not using that tool
effectively.
Senator Sullivan. I mean, we have banned Russian seafood,
right. Should we ban the importation of Chinese seafood?
Mr. Rickard. Just for me, I think that that is an
appropriate response overall to what is a huge challenge
internationally, yes.
Senator Sullivan. Other answers to that? And then, do you
have any more questions----
Mr. Saumweber. I will just say quickly here, I think that
there are two levels to operate on. On the first, as you well
know, Senator, a big part of leadership is showing up. And this
year we have had the 10th International Ocean Conference hosted
by the government of South Korea. This week is the third U.N.
Ocean Conference.
This fall, December, will be the G20 meeting in South
Africa. All three of these are major international conferences
focused on oceans, and at which IUU is the major agenda item.
And the U.S. has not sent a delegation to either of the ones
currently or previously happening, and I don't believe we will
be sending one to the G20.
That is a big problem. The rest of the world sees that.
China is stepping in and knows that. And our allies and
partners are wondering where we are in those forums and what
our priorities are. And then, second----
Senator Sullivan. That is a great point, by the way. We can
make sure we are reaching out to the State Department after
this hearing saying, hey, come on guys, show up. The
President's Executive Order focuses on this stuff, so let's get
going.
Mr. Saumweber. Thank you. I would also just like to
emphasize the points that Mr. Prout and Mr. Rickard made there
as well, that the market access control is such a crucial part
of this.
And, you know, we have a market access control program here
in the United States that has been, I would say, partially
implemented. And the problem with partial implementation is you
leave large gaps and loopholes for illegal product to enter the
country.
You have created essentially half of a regulatory program,
and people are smart, bad guys are smart, and they see where
the holes are, they see what the dark places are, and they fit
their illegal product in those dark places.
So, if we want to have an effective market access control
program, we need to really think about investing in NOAA, and
investing in our seafood import monitoring program, and
expanding it in ways that make sense, so we don't have these
gaps and loopholes.
Senator Sullivan. By the way, on international agreements,
10 years ago, when I first got to the Senate, I worked with a
number of members of this committee to pass legislation for the
U.S. to join the Port State Measures Agreement that deals with
a lot of these issues. China has finally ratified this
agreement just recently, but I always like to remind people
what we call--with the Chinese promise fatigue.
Which means almost every promise, almost every agreement,
almost everything they have ever told us as a country we are
going to do, they never do, right. We have promise fatigue with
the Chinese.
They just don't ever abide by their agreements. Do you
think the Chinese are going to shut down their IUU fishing to
comply with the Port State Measures Agreement, which they just
ratified?
Mr. Saumweber. Short answer, no.
Senator Sullivan. Hell no----
Mr. Saumweber. I think that the Chinese do what makes sense
in the immediate term. And so in other words, you know, they
will comply to the extent that it makes sense for them. And I
think that they have seen great success in using their distant
water fishing fleet, both as an economic tool for their own
purposes, but also as a tool of soft power, and I that they
will continue to do so.
Senator Sullivan. Yes. Any other thoughts on kind of final
thoughts on what we should be doing to kind of address these,
including the big one I really want to--and Mr. Poling, you
mentioned it in your testimony.
Like this idea of naming and shaming. This is a great
article, right. These Politico Magazines articles on all this
are really, really good, and yet, they just don't seem to be
breaking through to the general public.
Mr. Poling. I would also commend Ian Urbina, his Outlaw
Ocean outfit, for their fantastic reporting, which among other
things led to CBP's recent sanctioning of the Zhen Fa 7, the
Chinese vessel, for human trafficking.
Senator Sullivan. Right.
Mr. Poling. You know, one good example here, I think, is to
look to how the Europeans have more effectively leveraged their
market power than we have when it comes to sanctions on
specific countries for fishing violations. Not always perfect,
but their yellow card, red card system that they use to
threaten, and then in some cases ban the import of seafood, has
had success. Not in the case of China or Russia.
But after the AP won the Pulitzer in 2012 for their
investigations into slavery in the Thai seafood industry, the
Europeans gave them a yellow card, the threat that all Thai
seafood imports to the European Union would be banned if they
didn't get their act together.
And the Thais made remarkably quick progress in better
monitoring and enforcement. Same is true of the Vietnamese, who
have been under a yellow card for years. So, I think the U.S.
has been slow to recognize that we have the largest import
market in the world and an enormous amount of market power, if
we can adequately leverage it to get other countries to tow the
line.
Senator Sullivan. Yes. No, that is a really important
point. Although I will say the Marine Stewardship Council, we
have some real issues with them. They seem to be kind of in the
pocket of the Russians. They haven't checked on the Russian
fleet. They stamp them sustainably all the time, even though
they don't inspect them. There is some real issue with those
guys.
So, I agree that we need to do the sustainability
certification, but the MSC is failing, and they are, in my
view, kind of giving Russia a blank check to do whatever the
heck they want, and they don't even go check on the
sustainability of that fleet, primarily because the Russians
pay them money, in my view.
So I have got a real problem with those guys, and I think
they are actually part of the problem. Mr. Rickard, do you have
a final point on policies that we should be focused on?
Mr. Rickard. No, not beyond the things that have been
discussed.
Senator Blunt Rochester. Mr. Chairman, I want to follow up
on your point about it breaking through. And I think as a
follow up, it would be good to have some real conversation
about these things because it affects all of us. And so, the
breakthrough is important.
I think the global participation shows--demonstrates how
serious we are about it. But I really am interested as well in
the market access control and what you described as partial
implementation. I personally, I am new to this subcommittee and
would love to understand a little bit more about partial
implementation versus full implementation, and what that really
looks like.
And then last, my other concern was a comment that I think
Mr. Rickard made about Americans consuming less. That is
concerning. And so, figuring out how we balance and give real
confidence to people about the industry. And as a seafood
lover, this is really important I think to so many of us.
And so, again some of those are follow-ups that I would
like to delve a little bit deeper on as well. But thank you so
much, Mr. Chairman, for the important committee--subcommittee
opportunity. And also thank you to all of the witnesses.
Senator Sullivan. Great. Well, listen, this has been a
great hearing. I really, really appreciate the panelists. Mr.
Prout, thank you again for the award of coming the furthest,
for participating----
Senator Blunt Rochester. And nice lapel pin.
Senator Sullivan. And nice lapel pin. We are going to
follow up on this a lot. As you see, there is a real bipartisan
consensus to do more. I think we need to do a lot more.
And we will be relying on experts like all of you in the
coming weeks and months as we push forward on a really, really
important issue that, as Senator Blunt Rochester just talked
about, it encompasses national security, environmental issues,
human trafficking, slave labor, the economy of our coastal
communities, the viability of our fishermen. I mean, this kind
of encompasses a lot of things.
And the good news here in the Congress is that it is very
bipartisan, in part because it encompasses so many of these
important issues. So, what we will respectfully ask of the
witnesses is the Committee record will be open for about
another two weeks. There are additional questions that we
submit to you.
We ask that you try to get them back to the Committee
promptly. And other than that, at this juncture, this hearing
is adjourned. And I want to thank again all the witnesses for
their outstanding service today.
[Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
National Fisheries Institute
June 11, 2025
Hon. Dan Sullivan,
Chairman,
Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime, and Fisheries,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
United States Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Lisa Blunt Rochester,
Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime, and Fisheries,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
United States Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Sullivan and Ranking Member Blunt Rochester:
On behalf of the approximately 300 member companies of the National
Fisheries Institute (NFI), I write to share our views on several topics
impacting the seafood industry in connection with your Subcommittee's
June 11, 2025 ``Finding Nemo's Future: Conflicts Over Ocean Resources''
oversight hearing.
For almost 80 years NFI has been the leading voice for the fish and
seafood industry and America's largest seafood trade association. Our
members span the entire seafood value chain--from East Coast lobster,
clam and scallop harvesters, Alaska vessel owners, Pacific processors,
Midwest importers, and Southern shellfish producers, to aquaculture
providers, distributors, cold storage providers, retailers, and seafood
restaurants. Collectively, these companies supply American families
with tens of millions of delicious, healthy, sustainable seafood meals
every year, and directly support almost 1.6 million American jobs and
more than $183 billion in economic value to the U.S. economy.
NFI has long championed strong, practical Federal oversight of the
commercial seafood sector. From food safety and economic transparency
to cracking down on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing,
NFI and its member companies have consistently led efforts to uphold
responsible practices across the supply chain. Our commitment to
sustainable fisheries is grounded in the goal of ensuring American
consumers have continued access to nutritious, high-quality seafood--
today and for generations to come.
To put it bluntly, Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU)
fishing is a scourge on the seafood community. It harms effective
fishery management measures, undercuts harvesters that fish legally and
responsibly, and can be associated with unfair treatment of
crewmembers.
NFI and its members fully support efforts to combat IUU fishing.
That includes backing Federal initiatives that position the United
States as a global leader in enforcing sustainable fisheries management
and deploying tools like the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA),
which directly targets illicit activity at the point of entry.
The April 17, 2025, Executive Order from President Trump rightly
directs the Secretary of Commerce to reevaluate recent expansions to
the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) and to improve its
targeting of high-risk imports from nations with poor records on
international fisheries compliance.
However, NFI believes we must go further and eliminate the SIMP
program. SIMP has not delivered meaningful results. NOAA Fisheries' own
April 2021 report acknowledged that SIMP ``does not prevent or stop IUU
fish and fish products from entering U.S. commerce.'' The program's
one-size-fits-all, paper-heavy approach places an excessive burden on
compliant businesses, while doing little to deter IUU fishing at its
source. A global problem like IUU cannot be solved with a narrow,
after-the-fact, port-based documentation program.
Rather than rely on a flawed system like SIMP, the United States
should invest in more effective strategies: building international
partnerships, enhancing bilateral and multilateral cooperation,
improving enforcement coordination with allies, and supporting Regional
Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs) in their work to monitor and
regulate harvests.
Several promising pieces of legislation have been introduced,
including S.283, the Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act, and
the Fighting Illegal Seafood Harvests (FISH) Act--S.688 and H.R. 3756.
These bills would strengthen existing tools to combat IUU fishing by
enabling NOAA Fisheries to work more closely with the U.S. Coast Guard
and other enforcement partners to stop illegal activity before it
enters U.S. commerce--not after. NFI is proud to support these bills as
written, particularly if they replace the SIMP program with a more
results-driven, strategic approach.
Access to healthy, legal seafood is vital for American consumers,
and effectively addressing IUU fishing is essential to maintaining that
access. SIMP has not met its intended goals and continues to place
burdens on the wrong parties. Instead, the Federal government should
focus on collaborative, enforcement-first strategies that address the
root of the problem.
Thank you for the opportunity to share our views on this important
issue. We appreciate the Committee's attention to the challenges posed
by IUU fishing and stand ready to support efforts that strengthen
enforcement and ensure continued access to legal, responsibly sourced
seafood for American consumers.
Sincerely,
Lisa Wallenda Picard,
President and CEO.
______
From Bait to Plate--Tracking the Chinese Fishing Ships Linked to Rights
and Labour Abuses at Sea
Ian Urbina--November 20, 2023
China: The Superpower of Seafood
In recent decades, working aggressively to expand its might, China has
transformed itself into the world's seafood superpower. This pre-
eminence has come at a grave human and environmental cost. Part Four:
Preventing abuses by tracing seafood from bait to plate proves
difficult.
No sooner had U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in
March 2022 prohibiting the import of Russian seafood, an effort aimed
at depriving billions of dollars that might go towards Putin's war in
Ukraine, than members of Congress said the ban was unenforceable. U.S.
importers often do not know where their fish is actually caught, and
trade data indicate that nearly a third of wild-caught seafood imported
and labelled as being from China is actually pulled from Russian
waters.
The embarrassing setback highlighted the opaque nature of the
world's seafood supply chains and has since spurred calls from American
legislators, ocean conservationists, consumer advocates and human
rights organisations to require U.S. importers to track their seafood
from bait to plate to ensure it is not tied to labour and environmental
crimes or violations of sanctions on ``pariah'' states like North Korea
and Iran.
Since the Russian seafood import ban took effect in June 2022, at
least 31 Chinese squid ships have fished in Russian waters, including
several owned by companies shipping seafood to the U.S. and the
European Union, according to satellite data and export records.
China catches, processes and exports the vast majority of the
planet's seafood. It has a distant-water fleet that is more than double
the size of its next competitor. More than 70 percent of the seafood
landed by this fleet, measured by weight, is squid.
Ranked as the world's worst purveyor of illegal and unregulated
fishing and highly prone to using forced labour, this fleet has been
tied to myriad crimes, including cases of raiding Argentinian waters,
routinely turning off their transponders in violation of Chinese law,
illegally fishing in North Korean waters in violation of UN sanctions,
and engaging in violence, wage theft, severe neglect and human
trafficking of foreign and Chinese crew.
A Chinese captain opened his fishing logbook, which is supposed to
show where, when and what was caught. The first two pages had writing
on them, but the rest were blank.
With ships so far from shore, constantly in transit, typically
operating on the high seas, where national governments have limited
jurisdiction, seafood supply chains are distinctly tough to track.
In the many handoffs of catch between fishing boats, carrier ships,
processing plants and exporters there are gaping holes in traceability,
according to Sally Yozell, the director of the environmental security
programme at the Stimson Center, a research organisation in Washington,
D.C. ``Most seafood is caught by Chinese ships or processed in China,''
she said, ``which makes the chain of custody even more opaque.''
Some U.S. seafood companies that import from China say they know
their seafood is untainted by crimes because they are provided with
``catch certificates'' by Chinese processors that indicate the
provenance of the catch, detailed down to the level of which ship
caught it, and where. These documents are far from foolproof, because
they are self-reported, often unverifiable, and filled out at the
processing plant, not on the ships themselves where the crimes occur,
said Sara Lewis from FishWise, a nonprofit organisation that does
seafood sustainability consulting. The catch certificates also say
nothing about labour conditions.
Tracking Chinese ships
To document the nature of these traceability gaps as catch moves
from bait to plate, a team of reporters followed and, in some
instances, boarded for inspection, Chinese fishing ships at sea in
several locations, including in the waters close to North Korea,
Gambia, the Falkland Islands and the Galapagos Islands.
The team followed the ships by satellite back to ports, and then to
pin down who was cleaning, processing and freezing the catch for
eventual export, it tracked Chinese fishing ships as they moved their
catch to refrigeration ships and carried it to ports in China, where
the trucks were filmed and followed to the processing plants. The
reporters used export records to track the seafood to grocery stores,
restaurants and food service companies in the EU and US.
This investigation revealed examples of gaps in tracking at each
handoff. Roughly 350 miles west of the Galapagos Islands, on a Chinese
squid fishing ship, a deckhand opened the freezers several floors below
deck to reveal stacks of frozen catch in white bags. He explained that
they leave the fishing ship names off bags because that allows them to
transfer cargo more easily to other fishing ships owned by the same
company. This gives fishing companies greater versatility but also
makes it impossible for downstream buyers to know what ship actually
caught their fish.
On the bridge of another ship, a Chinese captain opened his fishing
logbook, which is supposed to show where, when and what was caught. The
first two pages had writing on them, but the rest were blank. ``No one
keeps those,'' a captain said about the logs, noting that company
officials on land reverse engineer the information later. In processing
plants, the squid on the conveyor belts was often separated not based
on the ship that caught it but instead based on weight, quality, size
and type based on the market willing to pay a premium for each
attribute.
Seafood is the planet's last major source of wild protein and it is
also the largest internationally traded food commodity. Experts cite a
variety of reasons that they worry about China's domination over this
market. Political analysts like Whitley Saumweber and Ty Loft at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., say
China's near monopoly over distant-water fishing ``imperils the food
security of millions of people,'' especially in developing countries
that rely most on fish for their source of protein.
American legislators say China's dependence on illegal practices
puts domestic fishermen at a competitive disadvantage. ``We cannot
continue to allow countries such as China and Russia to undercut our
honest fishers by abusing our oceans and fellow human beings,'' said a
June 2022 letter to Biden signed by Republican Jared Huffman from
California, and Republican Garret Graves from Louisiana. ``Addressing
illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing (IUU) is an important step
in ensuring that, not only are our citizens eating safe and healthy
food, but that their economic interests are protected.''
There are laws meant to block products associated with trafficked,
prison, Uighur, North Korean or child forced labour. These laws are
particularly ineffective with seafood.
Fishing is the world's deadliest profession and abusive conditions
on these ships are well documented. Human rights advocates such as the
Environmental Justice Foundation and Human Rights Watch have warned
that the seafood buyers have no way of knowing whether they are tacitly
complicit in these crimes. Consumer advocates cite the health risks
resulting from the 15 percent to 30 percent of the seafood that winds
up on American plates that is not what is listed on the label.
Because of the lack of tracking, much of the seafood that Americans
eat is also of uncertain origin.
That creates potential health risks, but it also means--as human
rights advocates such as the Environmental Justice Foundation and Human
Rights Watch have pointed out--that it's hard to know when fish have
been caught by vessels that rely on illegal fishing techniques and
labour practices.
Ocean conservationists like Oceana and Greenpeace point to the duty
of seafood companies to stop illegal fishing, especially as the seas
are running out of fish with more than a third of the world's stocks
overfished, a number that has tripled since 1974, according to the UN
agency that oversees fisheries.
A variety of supply-chain laws exist to prevent the U.S. import of
prohibited goods. Aside from the sanctions on states such as North
Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Russia, there are also laws meant to block
products associated with trafficked, prison, Uighur, North Korean or
child forced labour.
These laws are particularly ineffective with seafood, however,
because there is limited information about what happens on fishing
ships.
Kenneth Kennedy, a former forced-labour programme manager under the
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said U.S. legislators and
Federal agencies often lack the political will to apply most of the
anti-slavery or other product-tracking laws because such investigations
move painfully slowly and complicate international trade deals.
Federal efforts to monitor seafood have generally ignored the
Chinese fleet, even though these ships have the greatest ties to labour
and environmental crimes. More than 17 percent of seafood imports from
China were caught illegally, according to U.S. trade data. According to
a 2021 study by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized
Crime, a nonprofit that studies the impacts of organised crime, China
ranks first and Russia second, among 152 nations engaged in illegal
fishing. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor said Chinese squidders
are especially apt to use migrant and captive labour.
In 2016, the U.S. government created the Seafood Import Monitoring
Program, which requires that importers keep detailed records of their
catch from point of harvest until entry into the US. Squid, however,
was not included among the programme's 13 monitored seafood species,
which were chosen primarily because of worries about illegal fishing
and fraudulent labelling, not human rights and labour abuses. In 2021,
NOAA, the agency that oversees the monitoring programme, announced
plans to expand the number of included species based on new criteria,
including whether the fleet catching the fish is associated with human
trafficking.
American customs officials today track only two or three types of
squid, according to David Pearl, a foreign affairs specialist at NOAA--
a problem, given that there are in fact 30 to 40 commercial species.
Even when import records are kept, companies are allowed to conceal
their import and export data from the public by simply asking Federal
regulators for an exemption, which many companies do.
In press releases, on their websites and in Security and Exchange
Commission filings, some seafood retailers claim to enforce standards
that ensure that their supply chains are clean of illegality or abuse.
But John Hocevar, the oceans campaign manager at Greenpeace USA, said
that so-called corporate responsibility programmes tend to be
ineffective, because they are largely self-policing, lack third-party
oversight or verification, focus on environmental not human rights
concerns, and typically reach only as far as the processing plants, not
the ships where crimes are most likely to occur.
According to Yozell, from the Stimson Center, even knowing what
country caught the fish is tough. U.S. Federal law requires retailers
to inform customers of the origin of most types of food but exempts
seafood that is processed in another country and re-exported. If fish
is caught on Russian boats but processed in China, it gets labelled as
being a product of China.
Even companies that claim environmental and labour stewardship have
been found to be tied to Chinese ships with crimes and risk indicators.
Ruggiero Seafood, which says on its website that it does not sell
illegally caught seafood, has been tied to a squid ship that was found
violating UN sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters in 2019.
Kroger, one of the largest supermarket chains in the US, which says on
its website that it ``never knowingly'' buys illegally caught seafood,
has been linked to a Chinese ship that fished illegally in Indonesia in
2020. Lidl, the largest supermarket in Europe, cites its commitment to
responsible sourcing under the slogan ``A Better Tomorrow.'' But
Eridanous, Lidl's own brand of squid, is processed at a plant linked to
at least three fishing companies whose vessels have a history of
fishing offences, including lengthy transmission gaps in key squid
fisheries in the North and South Pacific, illegal fishing in Peru's
exclusive zone, and shark finning.
Ruggiero and Kroger did not reply to requests for comment. Lidl
said it is opposed to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and
that it raised the findings of this investigation with its supplier,
Zhoushan Xifeng, which provided a statement saying it is not involved
in fishing offences.
Many larger seafood companies have joined an industry programme
called the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which offers assurance on
traceability and sustainability. Jackie Marks, an MSC spokesperson,
said the programme is primarily to prevent environmental crimes and
tracking where fish came from, not what labour concerns might exist on
ships.
The programme does not assess labour conditions or do inspections
on fishing ships to check for crimes like wage theft, beatings, debt
bondage, or human trafficking. Instead, MSC focuses primarily on
determining whether processing plants are hygienic, labelling is
accurate, and all ships and plants in supply chains are identifiable.
To be certified under MSC, fishing and seafood companies have to submit
paperwork indicating they have not been prosecuted for forced labour or
related crimes in the past two years, and fishing companies must report
what steps they take to prevent such crimes.
The U.S. government has taken action in isolated cases. In December
2022, for example, the Treasury Department issued sanctions under the
Global Magnitsky Act against the directors of two large Chinese fishing
companies, Dalian Ocean Fishing and Pingtan Marine Enterprise, based on
allegations of forced labour and illegal fishing by some of their more
than 150 ships.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has the duty to stop
imports tied to forced labour entering the country, and in the past
five years the agency has boosted its efforts. It has issued such
orders on long-line tuna fishing vessels flagged in Taiwan, but it has
never taken action against Chinese squid ships, despite the evidence
that they are among the worst actors.
This story was produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit
journalism organisation in Washington, D.C. Reporting and writing was
contributed by Ian Urbina, Joe Galvin, Maya Martin, Susan Ryan, Daniel
Murphy and Austin Brush. This reporting was partially supported by the
Pulitzer Center.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Ted Cruz to
Gregory B. Poling
Question 1. How does IUU fishing by state-backed fleets--
particularly from the People's Republic of China--undermine U.S.
interests and the sovereignty of other nations?
Answer. IUU fishing including that by PRC-flagged vessels supports,
both directly and indirectly, non-state actors engaged in organized
crime, piracy, and armed insurgency and terrorism. It has become a part
of the portfolio of illegal criminal organizations, directly and
indirectly supporting their other illicit activities. IUU fishing
deprives governments in coastal and small island developing states of
funds needed for social services, infrastructure, and other necessary
spending. At the same time, it undercuts local livelihoods leading to
economic displacement and desperation. The combination of these two
effects directly undermines stability and security, and indirectly
contributes to the spread of threats from non-state actors.
These threats are especially worrying in the Pacific Islands, which
are overly reliant on revenues from foreign fishing and in which the
United States is a resident power due to its Pacific territories,
freely associated states, and long-standing security partnerships. The
PRC is the most prevalent IUU fisher in the region. It has growing
leverage thanks to its checkbook diplomacy and has used that for
political ends, including peeling away several of Taiwan's remaining
diplomatic allies in recent years, and to seek logistical access as it
builds out a blue water navy. In each of these cases, China relies in
part on elite capture, using economic inducements to leverage local
government, business, and thought leaders to fulfill Beijing's wishes.
This is effective in the Pacific Islands because of the severe resource
constraints facing regional governments and societies; resource
constraints that are made worse by the significant IUU fishing,
primarily by Chinese-owned vessels, across the region.
Question 2. As China expands its distant-water fleet and Russia
militarizes key Arctic Sea routes, what concrete lessons from U.S.
efforts to counter IUU fishing and maritime coercion can be applied to
the Central Arctic?
Answer. The United States has been an effective leader in counter-
IUU fishing efforts globally, and especially in the Indo-Pacific,
through three avenues. All three are applicable in the Arctic. These
are (1) significant resourcing for maritime domain awareness and
maritime security capacity building for partner states, including
through leadership in low-earth orbit remote sensing platforms; (2)
close partnership with other capable and like-minded states, including
Australia, France, New Zealand, and Japan in the Pacific; and (3)
diplomatic and legal leadership, especially by championing the adoption
of the Port State Measures Agreement globally.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Ted Cruz to
Nathan Rickard
Question 1. The Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act (S.
283) aims to develop a field test kit to determine the geographic
origin of these fish. How would this technology enhance the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ability to enforce fishing
regulations and prevent illegally caught seafood from entering the U.S.
market?
Answer. The bipartisan Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act
(S. 283) instructs Federal agencies to develop a standard methodology,
based on chemical analysis, for identification of the country-of-origin
of seafood as a tool to support the enforcement of the prohibition on
imports of seafood harvested through illegal, unreported, and
unregulated (IUU) fishing. This methodology is to be applied to pilot
species for identification, with red snapper as an example of a
stationary stock and tuna as an example of a highly migratory stock.
Under the express terms of the legislation, any methodology developed
should: (1) be consistent with the needs of Federal and state law
enforcement agencies; (2) minimize processing time; (3) involve the use
of a field kit that can be easily carried by one individual; and (4) be
able to test for prepared red snapper and tuna products. The Act
further requires the Undersecretary of Commerce for Standards and
Technology/Director of the National Institute of Standards and
Technology to issue a report no later than two years after enactment
regarding the development of the methodology and its application.
Through the development of a standard methodology, the Federal
government would be able to distinguish between fish landed in U.S.
waters and those landed in foreign waters. With a field test available,
law enforcement officials can ascertain the origin of red snapper and
tuna products and confiscate illegal seafood, as necessary, prior to
sale to American consumers.
The American shrimp industry has significant experience in the
development of test methodologies used to improve enforcement of U.S.
laws and regulations covering foreign seafood. In 2008, the Southern
Shrimp Alliance, in coordination with the Catfish Farmers of America
and Slade Gorton, worked with AOAC International to develop methods,
subject to laboratory evaluation, for the detection of a variety of
veterinary drugs and pesticides found in foreign shrimp, Siluriformes
fish (catfish/basa/tra/swai), and tilapia. Through this process, AOAC
International also began to work with test producers to develop fast
and affordable methods of testing for the presence of a wide-range of
veterinary drugs, including fluoroquinolones, nitrofurans,
chloramphenicol, quinolones, methyltestosterone, malachite green, and
gentian violet.\1\ The quality, sensitivity, and accuracy of these
tests have increased over time, permitting the European Union to
require that Indian and Vietnamese shrimp exporters test all shipments
of shrimp for veterinary drug contamination prior to exportation to
Europe.\2\ Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has
declined to obtain similar commitments from these countries, the
European Commission reports that this pre-export testing has
effectively prevented contaminated shrimp from being shipped to the
European Union.\3\
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\1\ See Southern Shrimp Alliance, Developing Standards and Testing
(Oct. 18, 2010), available at: https://shrimpalliance.com/developing-
standards-and-testing/.
\2\ See European Commission, Directorate-General for Health and
Food Safety, DG(SANTE) 2024-8085, Final Report of an Audit of Vietnam
Carried Out from 24 September to 17 October 2024 in Order to Evaluate
Controls on Residues of Pharmacologically Active Substances, Pesticides
and Contaminants in Animals and Animal Products, at 5 (``Supplementary
to the aquaculture NRCPs, national legislation requires that each
consignment of aquaculture products intended for export to the EU is
subject to official pre-export testing for chloramphenicol, nitrofuran
metabolites, enrofloxacin, ciprofloxacin and trifluralin. In addition,
consignments of finfish are to be analysed for malachite green and
leuco-malachite green, and consignments of crustaceans--for doxycycline
and oxytetracycline.'' Footnote omitted); and European Commission,
Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, DG(SANTE) 2022-7490,
Final Report of an Audit Carried Out in India from 07 September 2022 to
29 September 2022 in Order to Evaluate the Control of Residues and
Contaminants in Live Animals and Animal Products Including Controls on
Veterinary Medicinal Products, at 6 (``Commission Decision 2010/381/EU,
as last amended, requires that 50 percent of the aquaculture
consignments of Indian origin arriving at EU borders are tested for
residues of chloramphenicol, tetracycline, oxytetracycline,
chlortetracycline and metabolites of nitrofurans 3-amino-2-
oxazolidinone (AOZ), semicarbazide (SEM), 1-aminohydrantoin (AHD) and
3-amino-5-morpholinomethyl-2-oxazolidone (AMOZ). The same decision
requires that all consignments are accompanied by a laboratory result
from the place of origin (hereafter, the pre-export testing--PET) for
the same substances.'' Footnote omitted).
\3\ See European Commission, Directorate-General for Health and
Food Safety, DG(SANTE) 2022-7490, Final Report of an Audit Carried Out
in India from 07 September 2022 to 29 September 2022 in Order to
Evaluate the Control of Residues and Contaminants in Live Animals and
Animal Products Including Controls on Veterinary Medicinal Products, at
6 (``The data for 2020 to 2022 indicate. . .that without the 100
percent PET obligation, the number of RASFFs in the EU would have been
much higher.'').
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Separate and apart from developing methodologies for the detection
of veterinary drug residues in seafood products, the Southern Shrimp
Alliance also supported efforts by U.S.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to develop a testing
methodology for determining the country-of-origin of farm-raised shrimp
imported into the United States. CBP's work resulted in the publication
of an academic paper, Determination of the Country of Origin of Farm-
Raised Shrimp (Family Penaeide) Using Trace Metal Profiling and
Multivariate Statistics, in the Journal of Agricultural and Food
Chemistry (Aug. 28, 2009) that facilitated determinations as to the
country in which imports of products originating from the shrimp
species Penaeus vannamei were raised in aquaculture ponds.\4\ The
development of this testing methodology supported CBP's determination
that Chinese-origin shrimp was being unlawfully transshipped through
Malaysia and given a false country-of-origin identification to evade an
FDA Import Alert and antidumping duties imposed on Chinese-origin
shrimp.\5\
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\4\ See Smith, Ralph G. and Watts, Carson A., Determination of the
Country of Origin of Farm-Raised Shrimp (Family Penaeide) Using Trace
Metal Profiling and Multivariate Statistics, Journal of Agricultural
and Food Chemistry, Vol. 57, Issue 18, pp. 8244-8249 (Aug. 2009),
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf901658f.
\5\ See U.S. Government Accountability Office, Seafood Fraud: FDA
Program Changes and Better Collaboration among Key Federal Agencies
Could Improve Detection and Prevention, GAO-09-258 (Feb. 2009) at 15
(``On the basis of industry information and CBP and ICE investigations,
CBP determined that Chinese shrimp was being transshipped to the United
States through Malaysia. Due to this illegal transshipment, importers
of Chinese shrimp were able to circumvent not only the 2005 antidumping
duty but also FDA's recent import alert.'').
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Consistent with the recognition of the importance of developing
hand-held rapid tests for any issue raised by seafood trade, the
discussions with AOAC also expanded to encompass low-cost, rapid
methods for confirming the species of shrimp made available for sale as
being either foreign or domestic.\6\ Eventually, the domestic shrimp
industry would work directly with researchers in an effort to create
this capability. Beginning in 2020, the Southern Shrimp Alliance began
collaborating with a team of food safety microbiologists at Florida
State University to augment existing testing methodologies for seafood,
including rapid tests for the confirmation of species of both red
snapper and shrimp.\7\ Most recently, this has led to a project
authorized by Florida Sea Grant, PCR Lateral Flow Assays for Rapid
Onsite Seafood Authentication, intended to result in the
standardization and application of assays for the identification of six
commercially important species landed in the Gulf: (1) black grouper;
(2) red drum; (3) red grouper; (4) red snapper; (5) yellowtail snapper;
and (6) royal red shrimp.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ See Southern Shrimp Alliance, Developing Standards and Testing
(Oct. 18, 2010), available at: https://shrimpalliance.com/developing-
standards-and-testing/.
\7\ See Christine Blank, Florida Researchers Develop Rapid
Authenticity Test to Combat Shrimp Mislabeling, Species Substitution,
SeafoodSource (Aug. 4, 2023), available at: https://
www.seafoodsource.com/news/premium/processing-equipment/florida-
researchers-develop-rapid-authenticity-test-to-combat-shrimp-
mislabeling-species-substitution.
\8\ See Florida Sea Grant, PCR Lateral Flow Assays for Rapid Onsite
Seafood Authentication, available at: https://www.flseagrant.org/
projects/pcr-lateral-flow-assays-for-rapid-onsite-seafood-
authentication/.
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NOAA Fisheries has historically declined to exercise its full
statutory authority or to allocate meaningful agency resources to
regulating imported seafood, preferring to concentrate law enforcement
assets on governing the U.S. domestic seafood industry which now
accounts for just six percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S.
market.\9\ Nevertheless, the domestic shrimp industry has utilized
rapid tests to address the false marketing of imported, farm-raised
shrimp as domestic wild-caught shrimp in restaurants throughout our
southern coastline.\10\ The availability of low-cost, hand-held rapid
tests to confirm the species of shrimp offered for sale at food service
establishments has provided the U.S. shrimp industry with the capacity
to independently detect and document fraud. This campaign, in turn, has
resulted in increased interest by both Federal and state law
enforcement, including NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, to
review unlawful activities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ See U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Activities for the
Safety of Imported Seafood (Feb. 2023) at 4 (``Seafood has become one
of the most highly traded food commodities in the world with total
imports in 2018 accounting for approximately 94 percent of the volume
of seafood sold in the United States.'' Citation omitted).
\10\ See Southern Shrimp Alliance, Seafood Labeling Laws, https://
shrimpalliance.com/issues/industry-enhancement-efforts/seafood-
labeling-laws/.
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Based on the experience of the U.S. shrimp industry, the
development of effective, accurate, and inexpensive rapid tests
substantially augments the ability to detect and interdict unlawful
imports and misleading marketing of seafood products. As such, once
enacted, the Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act would provide
the American commercial red snapper and tuna fisheries with an
invaluable tool to identify foreign seafood products that are sourced
through IUU fishing. Even if NOAA Fisheries were to persist in its
heavy regulation of domestic commercial fisheries and lax oversight of
imported seafood, the development of field tests that permit a
determination as to whether red snapper or tuna were landed in U.S. or
foreign waters can be used by domestic commercial fishing industries to
draw needed attention to unlawful efforts to introduce IUU seafood into
this market.
This is particularly important for red snapper. NOAA Fisheries
first identified Mexico for IUU fishing related to the activities of
lanchas in U.S. waters targeting red snapper in 2019. Thereafter,
pursuant to the High Seas Driftnet Moratorium Protection Act, NOAA
Fisheries negatively certified Mexico for IUU fishing in both 2021 and
2023 ``for its continued failure to combat unauthorized fishing
activities by small hulled vessels (called lanchas) in U.S. waters, for
which it was first identified in 2019.'' \11\ Virtually all of the U.S.
Coast Guard's interdictions of foreign vessels fishing in U.S. waters
in Fiscal Years 2023 and 2024 came from the single area in which
lanchas operate: ``98 percent (114 of 116) of the interdictions
occurred in Coast Guard District 8, the Gulf of America.'' \12\
Although Mexico was negatively certified for a second time in 2023, the
number of Coast Guard detections and interdictions increased in Fiscal
Year 2024 compared to Fiscal Year 2023.\13\ The incursions into U.S.
waters from lanchas continue today, with the U.S. Coast Guard routinely
reporting interdictions\14\ and the U.S. Department of Justice recently
reporting that it had changed policy and that the Federal government is
now arresting and criminally prosecuting Mexican fishermen involved in
lanchas operations.\15\ In the first criminal prosecution publicly
announced, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of
Texas explained that the captain of the lancha ``had been arrested on
28 prior occasions for illegal fishing'' and that the entire crew
``knew the catch would be seized if they were caught in U.S. waters but
chose to take the risk due to the limited supply of red snapper in
Mexican waters.'' \16\
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\11\ NOAA Fisheries, Port Denials Under the Moratorium Protection
Act, https://www
.fisheries.noaa.gov/international-affairs/port-denials-under-
moratorium-protection-act.
\12\ Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, Coast Guard Missed Opportunities to Interdict Foreign Fishing
Vessels Suspected of Illegally Fishing in U.S. Waters, OIG-2525 (June
6, 2025) at 3, footnote omitted, https://www.oig.dhs.gov/reports/2025/
coast-guard-missed-opportunities-interdict-foreign-fishing-vessels-
suspected-illegally-fishing-us-waters/oig-25-25-jun25.
\13\ See id. at 3 (``Specifically, the Coast Guard interdicted 55
of 265 detections in FY 2023, and 61 of 281 detections in FY 2024.'').
\14\ See e.g., U.S. Coast Guard Press Release, Coast Guard, partner
agencies detain 13 Mexican Fishermen, Seizes 1,500 pounds of illegally
caught fish off Texas coast (June 13, 2025), https://www.news.uscg.mil/
Press-Releases/Article/4216692/coast-guard-partner-agencies-detain-13-
mexican-fishermen-seizes-1500-pounds-of/; and U.S. Coast Guard Press
Release, Coast Guard detains 4 Mexican fishermen, seizes 200 pounds of
illegally caught fish off Texas coast (May 23, 2025), https://
www.news.uscg.mil/Press-Releases/Article/4196727/coast-guard-detains-4-
mexican-fishermen-seizes-200-pounds-of-illegally-caught-f/.
\15\ See United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of
Texas Press Release, Mexican commercial fishermen plead guilty to
illegal red snapper harvesting (June 9, 2025), https://www.justice.gov/
usao-sdtx/pr/mexican-commercial-fishermen-plead-guilty-illegal-red-
snapper-harvesting.
\16\ Id.
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Nevertheless, NOAA Fisheries has, to date, failed to recommend that
the President utilize authority under 16 U.S.C. Sec. 1826a(b)(3) to bar
imports as a response to Mexico's IUU fishing of red snapper in Texas
waters. Under this statutory provision, in response to negative
certification determinations from NOAA Fisheries, the President ``shall
direct the Secretary of the Treasury to prohibit the importation into
the United States of fish and fish products and sport fishing equipment
(as that term is defined in section 4162 of title 26) from that
nation.'' NOAA Fisheries, however, has never recommended that any
action be taken to restrict snapper imports from Mexico.
Unsurprisingly, both the volume and value of our imports of Mexican
snapper have grown significantly. Specifically, in the four years
between 2012 and 2015, the United States imported an average of 8.1
million pounds of snapper from Mexico valued at $22.8 million.\17\ In
the most recent four-year period spanning from 2021 through 2024, the
average annual volume of Mexican-origin snapper imports increased by
nearly 38 percent to 11.1 million pounds, while the average annual
value of these imports more than doubled to $49.3 million.\18\ Thus,
despite ``the limited supply of red snapper in Mexican waters,'' our
imports of Mexican snapper do not reflect any depletion in that stock.
At the same time, incidents of IUU fishing by of red snapper by Mexican
vessels in U.S. waters have increased.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Source: U.S. International Trade Commission, Dataweb (HTSUS
Codes: 0302.89.5058 and 0303.89.0067).
\18\ Id.
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The IUU fishing of red snapper harms American fishermen by
depleting managed snapper stocks in U.S. waters, killing marine mammals
and sea turtles that are protected under U.S. fishery management plans,
and through sales lost to Mexican snapper in the U.S. market.
Accordingly, although the development of a field test kit to determine
origin of red snapper would provide a number of benefits in the market
for both law enforcement and American commercial fishermen, the access
that snapper harvested from Mexican lanchas in U.S. waters has to our
market must be shut off. Congress has authorized such action to be
taken and the facts overwhelming support doing so.
Question 2. What specific tactics are foreign competitors using--
like transshipment, fraudulent paperwork, or mislabeling--to flood the
U.S. market with illegally harvested shrimp, and what enforcement tools
or policy changes do you believe are most urgently needed to protect
Texas shrimpers from this unfair and illegal competition?
Answer. According to NOAA Fisheries, the value of commercial shrimp
landings in the state of Texas fell from $185 million in 2021 to $90
million in 2023.\19\ Although final landings data has not yet been
reported by NOAA Fisheries for 2024, preliminary reporting indicates
that commercial values for domestic shrimp remained at depressed levels
last year. The decline in value was not principally due to a limited
harvest, as the volume of shrimp landed in Texas in 2021 was 65 million
pounds, while landings in 2023 were 56 million pounds.\20\ Rather,
imports of cheap, unfairly-traded shrimp overwhelmed the U.S. market
and forced prices down such that Texas shrimpers were forced to work
twice as hard--during a period of significant inflation--to earn income
in line with historic experience. Many Texas shrimpers, faced with
these stunning price declines, tied up and stopped working.
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\19\ Source: NOAA Fisheries, Fisheries One Stop Shop (FOSS)
Database.
\20\ Id.
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As the Texas state legislature recently detailed in H.C.R. 76,
signed by Governor Greg Abbott on June 20th,\21\ the shrimp industry in
Texas supports more than 14,000 jobs, generating approximately $850
million in economic value for the state. As H.C.R. 76 explains, ``[t]he
sustainability of the domestic shrimp industry is crucial to the
survival of many small, family-owned businesses and to the stability of
Gulf Coast communities, but this important economic engine is currently
imperiled by unfair competition and other rising challenges. . .'' \22\
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\21\ See https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/
Text.aspx?LegSess=89R&Bill=HCR76.
\22\ See id.
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The domestic shrimp industry has expended substantial resources
engaging in self-help to counter this unfair competition. In 2003, the
shrimp industry organized to use the antidumping laws to address the
harmful impact of shrimp sold at below fair value in the market, with
antidumping duty orders on Chinese, Indian, Thai, and Vietnamese shrimp
imposed in February 2005\23\ that remain in place today. Even more
recently, led by the Port Arthur, Texas-based American Shrimp
Processors Association, the domestic shrimp industry successfully
petitioned for relief from countervailable subsidies granted to foreign
shrimp industries in Ecuador, India, and Vietnam and from shrimp sold
at below fair value from Indonesia.\24\
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\23\ See Notice of Amended Final Determination of Sales at Less
than Fair Value and Antidumping Duty Order: Certain Frozen Warmwater
Shrimp from the People's Republic of China, 70 Fed. Reg. 5,149 (Dep't
Commerce Feb. 1, 2005); Notice of Amended Final Determination of Sales
at Less than Fair Value and Antidumping Duty Order: Certain Frozen
Warmwater Shrimp from India, 70 Fed. Reg. 5,147 (Dep't Commerce Feb. 1,
2005); Notice of Amended Final Determination of Sales at Less than Fair
Value and Antidumping Duty Order: Certain Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from
Thailand, 70 Fed. Reg. 5,145 (Dep't Commerce Feb. 1, 2005); and Notice
of Amended Final Determination of Sales at Less than Fair Value and
Antidumping Duty Order: Certain Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 70 Fed. Reg. 5,152 (Dep't Commerce Feb.
1, 2005).
\24\ See Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Indonesia: Antidumping Duty
Order; Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador, India, and the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam: Countervailing Duty Orders, 89 Fed. Reg. 104,982
(Dep't Commerce Dec. 26, 2024).
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In the past, U.S. shrimp importers and foreign shrimp exporters
responded to the imposition of antidumping duties through
transshipment, fraudulent paperwork, and mislabeling. Now, however, the
U.S. shrimp market is overwhelmingly dominated by foreign aquaculture
industries that routinely use harmful and banned antibiotics in their
shrimp aquaculture. Last year, roughly 48 percent of the total volume
of shrimp and shrimp products imported into the United States came from
just two countries: India and Vietnam.\25\ These two countries are, by
far, the single largest sources of contaminated shrimp imports in major
shrimp importing markets, including the European Union, Japan, and the
United States.\26\
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\25\ According to the U.S. International Trade Commission's Dataweb
service, the United States imported 1.7 billion pounds of shrimp in
2024, of which 649 million pounds came from India and 153 million
pounds came from Vietnam.
\26\ See Southern Shrimp Alliance, Which Countries Continue to Use
Antibiotics in Shrimp Aquaculture? The EU, Japan, and the United States
All Find the Same Thing: India and Vietnam (Jan. 30, 2025), https://
shrimpalliance.com/which-countries-continue-to-use-antibiotics-in-
shrimp-aquaculture-the-eu-japan-and-the-united-states-all-find-the-
same-thing-india-and-vietnam/.
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Moreover, the U.S. shrimp market is now dominated by foreign supply
chains that have been corrupted by forced labor practices. Most
disturbingly, even with repeated exposes and confirmation of the
widespread use of forced labor in the Indian shrimp supply chain,\27\
India has accounted for between 52 percent and 61 percent of the total
volume of peeled shrimp imported into the United States in every year
since 2018.\28\ In September of last year, the U.S. Department of Labor
added shrimp from India to the list of goods produced by forced
labor.\29\ Nevertheless, for the last seven years, more than one out of
every two pounds of foreign, peeled shrimp sold in our market came from
a supply chain featuring contract peeling sheds where vulnerable
populations are subject to heinous exploitation.
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\27\ See Corporate Accountability Lab, Hidden Harvest: Human Rights
and Environmental Abuses in India's Shrimp Industry (Mar. 2024),
https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/hidden-harvest; The Outlaw Ocean
Project, India Shrimp: A Growing Goliath, The True Price of a Cheap
Appetizer, https://www.theoutlawocean.com/investigations/india-shrimp-
a-growing-goliath/; and CNN, The U.S. Is India's Biggest Importer of
Shrimp. Teenage Girls and Women Working in the Booming Industry
Describe Grueling Conditions, https://www.cnn.com/interactive/asequals/
indian-seafood-industry-women-exploitation-as-equals-intl-cmd/.
\28\ Source: U.S. International Trade Commission, Dataweb.
\29\ See Notice of Publication to the Department of Labor's List of
Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor, and Updates to the List
of Products Requiring Federal Contractor Certification as to Forced or
Indentured Child Labor, 89 Fed. Reg. 72,897 (Dep't Labor Sept. 6,
2024); and Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of
Labor, List of Goods Produced by Child or Forced Labor, https://
www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods.
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Importation of shrimp contaminated by harmful antibiotics, an
adulterated food product, is prohibited by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic
Act.\30\ Similarly, importation of shrimp produced through forced labor
is prohibited pursuant to 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1307. Accordingly, the
importation of foreign shrimp containing veterinary drug residues and/
or produced through forced labor constitutes an illegal act.
Nevertheless, minimal enforcement of our laws has obviated any need for
foreign exporters or U.S. importers to engage in the type of fraud used
to obfuscate the origin of the shrimp. Instead, contaminated shrimp and
shrimp produced through forced labor is simply routinely imported into
the United States, with small fractions of contaminated shrimp
occasionally identified through the FDA's limited sampling of imported
food. No imports of Indian shrimp have ever been prohibited from entry
into this country because they were produced by forced labor.
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\30\ See 21 U.S.C. Sec. 331(a).
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While information regarding the FDA's sampling and testing of
foreign shrimp products, specifically, is not publicly available, the
agency has endeavored to make more information regarding its activities
available to the public through data dashboards.\31\ These data
dashboards provide user-friendly access to information regarding
specific import entry lines of food products, as well as any on-site
inspections of foreign food facilities. On a broader level, the data
dashboards also allow users to analyze the number of entry lines,
refusals, examined entry lines, and sampled entry lines by country and
broad product type.
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\31\ See https://datadashboard.fda.gov/oii/cd/index.htm.
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Here, the information made available by the FDA of human foods
sourced from India is instructive. In 2012, the United States imported
176,832 entry lines of human food from India, of which the FDA sampled
1,908 entry lines (1.1 percent) and refused 1,700 entry lines (1.0
percent).\32\ By 2019, we imported 329,601 entry lines of human food
from India--an increase of 86.4 percent in just seven years--of which
the FDA sampled a mere 1,206 entry lines (0.4 percent)--a 36.8 percent
decline--and refused just 925 entry lines (0.3 percent)--a 45.6 percent
decline.\33\ As these numbers imply, the amount of adulterated imported
food products detected by the FDA is closely correlated to the number
of samples taken by the agency. As such, it is not a surprise that in
2024 the U.S. imported an unprecedented record of 437,145 entry lines
of human food from India--an increase of 32.6 percent in five years--of
which the FDA sampled 1,836 entry lines (0.4 percent) and refused 1,991
entry lines (0.5 percent).\34\
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\32\ See https://datadashboard.fda.gov/oii/cd/impsummary.htm.
\33\ Id.
\34\ Id.
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Because these numbers demonstrate that the chances of having any
shipment sampled are incredibly low, the reasonable conclusion to be
drawn by any Indian foreign shrimp producer is that there is little to
be gained in ceasing use of veterinary drugs that act as growth
promoters and prophylactics against crop loss when supplying U.S.
customers. Similarly, because there is little risk that a shipment of
contaminated foreign shrimp will be identified at the U.S. port, no
incentives exist for U.S. importers to demand that foreign ponds stop
the practice of using banned antibiotics or fungicides.
The U.S. shrimp industry, and Texan shrimpers in particular, cannot
compel the FDA or U.S. Customs and Border Protection to enforce Federal
laws that should prohibit the importation of these cheap, unfairly-
traded goods that have cratered dockside prices. However, the failure
of these Federal agencies to administer their statutory obligations has
devastated American shrimping coastal communities from Texas to North
Carolina.