A new investigation by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) says the global squid industry is characterised by widespread illegal fishing, environmental destruction and severe human rights abuses among crew.
The EJF says it has drawn on five years of research, involving more than 430 interviews with Indonesian and Filipino fishers working aboard 249 distant water fishing vessels, for its report, entitled Out of Sight, Out of Control: How unregulated squid fishing is driving ecosystem destruction & forced labour at sea.
It says there are systemic failures across three major squid fisheries in the Northwest Indian Ocean, the Southeast Pacific, and the Southwest Atlantic, which together supply around 60% of the world’s squid.
The findings have implications for European consumers, as the EU had the world’s largest market for squid and cuttlefish during the period of the report’s investigation, accounting for approximately 29% of global imports.
The EJF says its findings reveal that these fisheries operate largely beyond effective oversight, creating conditions in which abuses flourish unchecked. It says fishers interviewed described violence, wage theft and deaths at sea, alongside widespread shark finning and the capture of vulnerable marine species.
Lights And Labour — Crew members work beneath powerful squid-fishing lamps aboard a distant-water vessel. The Environmental Justice Foundation report links major squid fisheries to alleged labour abuses, illegal fishing practices and environmental harm. Photo: Environmental Justice Foundation
It says that almost all interviewees reported engaging in at-sea trans-shipment. This allows vessels to remain at sea for extended periods, obscuring the origin of catches and enabling illegal or unsustainable products to enter global supply chains.
The investigation found that conditions deteriorate significantly on longer voyages. On vessels operating for more than a year without returning to port, reports of physical abuse and environmentally destructive practices increased sharply, it says.
The EJF report says that China’s distant water squid fleet, the largest in the world, was associated with the most severe outcomes across nearly every indicator measured, including labour abuses, illegal practices and environmental harm. “The scale and opacity of these operations raise serious concerns for global seafood markets,” the EJF says.
The EJF is calling for:
- Urgent action from governments, industry and international bodies, including stronger oversight of distant water fleets;
- Strict regulation of trans-shipment, limits on time spent at sea, and improved labour protections for fishers.
- Strengthening controls by market states, including major seafood importers, to prevent products linked to illegal fishing and forced labour from entering supply chains.
The Environmental Justice Foundation was founded in London in 2000 and registered as a charity in 2001 by Steve Trent and Juliette Williams in response to the human suffering and environmental degradation they witnessed in their work as environmental campaigners.
Its first campaign in 2001 involved defending a community’s fishing rights in Cambodia, and it founded a national network. It expanded its work to campaign against the pesticide endosulfan (2002), trafficking of wildlife (2003), shrimp trawling and shrimp farming (2003), illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (2004), cotton production (2004) and climate refugees (2009).
The report, Out of Sight, Out of Control: How unregulated squid fishing is driving ecosystem destruction & forced labour at sea, was published on June 4th, and the full version is here.
