Saving Seafood

More Than 2,000 Enslaved Fishermen Rescued in 6 Months

September 17, 2015 — AMBON, Indonesia (AP) — More than 2,000 fishermen have been rescued this year from brutal conditions at sea, liberated as a result of an Associated Press investigation into seafood brought to the U.S. from a slave island in eastern Indonesia.

Dozens of Burmese men in the bustling port town of Ambon were the latest to go home, some more than a decade after being trafficked onto Thai trawlers. Grabbing one another’s hands, the men walked together toward buses last week. As they pulled away for the airport, some of those still waiting their turn to go home cheered, throwing their arms in the air.

“I’m sure my parents think I’m dead,” said Tin Lin Tun, 25, who lost contact with his family after a broker lured him to Thailand five years ago. Instead of working in construction, as promised, he was sold onto a fishing boat and taken to Indonesia. “I’m their only son. They’re going to cry so hard when they see me.”

The reunion he envisions has played out hundreds of times since March, after the AP tracked fish — caught by men who were savagely beaten and caged — to the supply chains of some of America’s biggest food sellers, such as Wal-Mart, Sysco and Kroger, and popular brands of canned pet food like Fancy Feast, Meow Mix and Iams. It can turn up as calamari at fine restaurants, as imitation crab in a sushi roll or as packages of frozen snapper relabeled with store brands that land on our dinner tables. The U.S. companies have all said they strongly condemn labor abuse and are taking steps to prevent it.

In response, a multimillion-dollar Thai-Indonesian fishing business has been shut down, at least nine people have been arrested and two fishing cargo vessels have been seized. In the U.S., importers have demanded change, three class-action lawsuits are underway, new laws have been introduced and the Obama administration is pushing exporters to clean up their labor practices. The AP’s work was entered into the congressional record for a hearing, and is scheduled to be brought up for discussion again later this month.

The largest impact, by far, has been the rescue of some of the most desperate and isolated people in the world. More than 2,000 men from Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos have been identified or repatriated since the AP’s initial story ran, according to the International Organization for Migration and foreign ministries. The tally includes eight fishermen trafficked aboard a Thai cargo ship seized in neighboring Papua New Guinea.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

 

CARLOS RAPHAEL: White House should heed call on at-sea monitors

September 10, 2015 — In a show of bipartisan cooperation that’s all too rare in today’s politics, Massachusetts’ Republican governor and all-Democratic congressional delegation united late last month to call upon the Obama administration to reverse a particularly egregious federal policy: the current plan by NOAA to require the fishing industry to pay the full cost for at-sea monitors for the groundfish fishery. Fishermen will now be required to hire monitors from an approved short list of for-profit companies. This policy will impose a significant burden on area fishermen, and poses a threat to the future of a fishery that is already reeling from a string of onerous federal regulations.

Thanks goes to Gov. Charlie Baker, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and all nine of our Massachusetts representatives in Congress for giving voice to what fishermen have been saying for years: Forcing fishermen to pay for the observers who monitor their catch will be a financially disastrous outcome for the fishery. As their joint letter notes, ther National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s own analysis of shifting the cost of monitors onto the industry finds that 60 percent of the fleet would be operating at a loss if required to pay for monitoring. In just the first year, the program would cost fishermen an estimated $2.64 million.

Yet NOAA does not seem to fully realize how seriously this policy puts the fishery at risk. The $2.64 million that NOAA expects the fishery to pay in monitoring costs is $2.64 million that fishermen simply don’t have. The fishery still has not recovered from years of declining quotas and a federally declared economic disaster in 2012. Imposing another unfunded mandate on the fishery will force many remaining fishermen to exit the industry altogether.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times