Thai fishing vessel. (Photo: Stock File)

Greenpeace uncovers Thai’s fleet manoeuvre to avoid regulations

After a year of investigation, Greenpeace Southeast Asia found out that Thailand’s overseas fishing fleets are intentionally shifting to remote waters to avoid fishing regulations.

The investigation started seven months after Associated Press agency released its report on shocking human rights abuses on Thailand’s fishing industry.

“The Thai government has tried to clamp down on human rights violations in the fishing industry but these Thai fleets remain as ruthless as ever,” said Anchalee Pipattanawattanakul, Oceans Campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

Rather than changing the way they fish to meet the regulations, the Thai’s fleet just shifts to isolated and less regulated fishing grounds outside the region, the representative of the NGO explains.

Between 2014 and 2016 Greenpeace Southeast Asia tracked Thailand’s overseas fishing vessels and found that, after fishing restrictions were imposed by the governments of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea in August 2015, as many as 76 Thai flagged vessels shifted their operations to the environmentally fragile Saya de Malha Bank in the Indian Ocean, more than 7,000 km away from Samut Sakhon, Thailand’s seafood epicentre.

The maintenance of the fishing fleets in the distant Saya de Malha Bank requires routine trips by refrigerated vessels of over 7,000 km, which makes transhipment at sea essential for the Thai commercial model. This manoeuvre allows fishing vessels to remain at sea and out of reach of authorities, where they can operate outside the law. Reefers deliver supplies and sometimes trafficked workers, and collect fish with some shipments reported to include up to a 50 per cent bycatch of sharks.

The Turn the Tide report also found that the negligent use of trafficked, abused and underpaid local and foreign workers can lead to horrific outcomes such as the outbreak of beriberi disease.

An official investigation into six beriberi fatalities concluded that the men had died of heart failure caused by poor nutrition, overwork, and long periods at sea without returning to port.

Furthermore, Greenpeace Southeast Asia revealed that some even experienced physical violence on the vessels.

“The powerful Thai Overseas Fishing Association, which controls much of the billion dollar fishing industry, has eroded trust in their willingness to operate modern, sustainable and ethical businesses. Greenpeace and other Human Rights NGOs are asking them to change the way they operate to meet regulations for the sustainability and viability of the fishing and seafood sectors,” added Pipattanawattanakul.

Greenpeace Southeast Asia’s supply chain investigations demonstrate the unacceptably high risk of tainted surimi entering numerous seafood and non-seafood supply chains throughout 2016, including products destined for export which end up being raw ingredients for sushi and pet food products sold around the world.

"As long as transhipment at sea continues, it will be nearly impossible for any seafood company to guarantee that the fish they are selling is both sustainable and ethically caught,” explained Oliver Knowles, Sustainable Tuna Project Leader at Greenpeace New Zealand.

Greenpeace recommends stricter monitoring and enforcement measures from the Thai government to ensure that only sustainably and ethically-produced Thai seafood reaches the shelves, freezers, sushi bars and cat bowls around the world.
 

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