October 20, 2015 — It was a month into the voyage from Spain to the Ross Sea in Antartica that the captain of the fishing boat threatened to throw Liz Mitchell overboard.
In the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean, off the Falkland Islands, that would have meant certain death.
But all that Mitchell, a U.S. fisheries observer, could think of was how embarrassed she was. The captain had just screamed at her in front of his officers, because she witnessed his crew transferring fishing bait to another vessel in mid-sea.
“When that guy said that to me I was shaking, but only because I was humiliated,” Mitchell said. “At the time I didn’t take him seriously, that he could actually do that. I don’t know whether it was naiveté or just plain being stupid, but I just never believed anybody would do that to me.”
Fisheries observers face the same treacherous conditions as commercial fishermen: the risk of getting a hand caught in a winch, being knocked overboard by a rogue wave, of dying in a capsized vessel. But observers face special risks of their own — from those they watch.
It was part of Mitchell’s job to record and report conduct such as the bait transfer — a possible flag for an unregistered boat fishing illegally. She had been hired on to monitor the vessel’s movements as well as track commercial fish and protected species it caught or killed along the way.
Not long before, Mitchell had been told by a crew member that the ship she was on — a U.S.-flagged longliner — had ties to a notorious Spanish fish poacher. That made the threat of being thrown into the sea all the more salient.
Threats and intimidation are an unfortunate part of the job, said Mitchell, who is president of the Association for Professional Observers, a nonprofit that advocates for better living conditions and improved safety measures. She got her start as a fisheries observer in Alaska in 1983, and did stints all over the world, including in Hawaii. She now lives in Oregon.
Read the full story at Civil Beat