Illegal Fishing Is a Global Threat. Here’s How to Combat It.

Illegal Fishing Is a Global Threat. Here’s How to Combat It.

Chinese fishing boats band together to thwart an attempt by Korea Coast Guard ships to stop alleged illegal fishing in the Yellow Sea.
Chinese fishing boats band together to thwart an attempt by Korea Coast Guard ships to stop alleged illegal fishing in the Yellow Sea. Park Young-Chul/AFP/Getty Images

Fishing provides a critical source of food and income for many countries, but much of it occurs unlawfully, harming vulnerable populations and eroding maritime governance.  

June 4, 2021 1:06 pm (EST)

Chinese fishing boats band together to thwart an attempt by Korea Coast Guard ships to stop alleged illegal fishing in the Yellow Sea.
Chinese fishing boats band together to thwart an attempt by Korea Coast Guard ships to stop alleged illegal fishing in the Yellow Sea. Park Young-Chul/AFP/Getty Images
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Current political and economic issues succinctly explained.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing—known as IUU fishing—is a global scourge. Carried out by malicious actors in the shadows of the world’s oceans, it can devastate ecosystems, degrade food stocks, and undermine fragile fishing economies. A broad network of international partners, including U.S. civilian and military agencies, should work to eradicate this threat to the world’s shared prosperity.

What is IUU fishing?

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Illegal fishing refers to fishing activities in contravention of applicable laws and regulations. Unreported fishing refers to fishing activities that are not reported or are misreported to relevant authorities. And unregulated fishing is done by vessels without nationality or that are not regulated by their flag state, the country in which a vessel is registered. It also occurs when vessels fish in areas or for stocks for which there are no applicable conservation or management measures.

Where is it happening?

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IUU fishing is a global problem, occurring in the South China Sea, off the west coast of Africa (where estimates put illegal catch at 40 percent), off both coasts of South America, in the eastern Indian Ocean, throughout Oceania, and around Antarctica. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s IUU Fishing Index, which benchmarks countries’ vulnerability to, prevalence of, and response to IUU fishing, four of the top five worst-scoring countries are in Southeast Asia. China tops the list, and Russia is the sole non–Southeast Asian country, at number four.

In one particularly egregious example last year, a fleet of 350 Chinese vessels was observed conducting predatory high seas fishing around Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site. The fleet was targeting squid and scooping up other valuable and vulnerable marine life. Locals sounded the alarm, fearing the vessels were depleting fish populations, hurting the livelihoods of small-scale fishermen in the islands, and devastating the sensitive ecosystem. Ecuador called for help, and the U.S. Coast Guard deployed a national security cutter to help patrol the area.

What are the concerns?

IUU fishing threatens ocean ecosystems, including sustainable fisheries, which are critical to global food security, and it puts those that abide by the law in the United States and abroad at a disadvantage. In 2020, the U.S. Coast Guard said that IUU fishing has replaced piracy as the leading global maritime security threat. It is estimated that up to one in every five fish caught around the world is obtained through IUU fishing, representing about a $23 billion annual loss for the legal fishing industry. And, in large part, the poorest countries in the world, which depend on fisheries for food and livelihoods, are hit the hardest.

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Fish is an essential protein source for over 40 percent of the global population. IUU fishing can decimate fish stocks, undermining a country’s ability to feed its people. Further, IUU fishing can disrupt and destabilize fragile economies of coastal states. Small island nations are particularly vulnerable, in that many have vast ocean resources but very limited capacity to patrol their exclusive economic zones, or EEZs. Many of these small nations also struggle to apprehend and prosecute transgressors.

What is the threat beyond the illegal fishing itself?

IUU fishing often happens along with other unlawful activities, including human trafficking and forced labor. Interpol reports that fishing vessels are often used to smuggle people, drugs, and weapons, as well as to carry out acts of piracy and terrorism. IUU fishing activities are highly mobile, increasingly sophisticated, and sometimes conducted with logistical and security support from fishers’ flag states.

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These acts undermine internationally recognized fishing regimes, the work of regional fisheries management organizations, and international bodies such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Fisheries Division. Broadly speaking, it erodes collective global maritime governance.

How does the United States work to combat IUU fishing?

Various U.S. government agencies work with foreign partners or participate in different multilateral forums to combat IUU fishing. For instance, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration works with the United Nations and regional fisheries management organizations. The U.S. military, particularly the coast guard and navy, provides maritime security assistance and training to coastal state partners in regions around the world. At the same time, the United States works to model responsible maritime behavior through a strict fisheries management program and ranks in the top five countries [PDF] in the world in responding to IUU fishing.

What can other governments do to fight IUU fishing?

Roles and responsibilities for a government vary depending on its relationship to the vessel and the catch. A vessel’s flag state has exclusive authority over it on the high seas, including with regard to matters such as labor standards and ship safety. Therefore, flag states must ensure that regulations are in place and enforced to deter IUU fishing and associated crimes from occurring on their vessels. Ignoring the duties of being a flag state can, and often does, allow illegal activity to take place. In addition, there are particularly concerning cases where flag states willfully abet IUU perpetrators by encouraging or assisting vessels that encroach on sovereign waters and EEZs of other nations or intimidate local fishermen.

Port states also can play a significant role by blocking vessels engaged in IUU fishing from using their ports and landing their catches. Governments have a framework to do so pursuant to the Agreement on Port State Measures, a UN treaty that came into force in 2016 and was the first binding international agreement that specifically targets IUU fishing. Approximately one-third of the world’s countries are party to it, but UN members should collectively work to increase that number.

Meanwhile, coastal states have a responsibility to assist in curbing IUU fishing. They are responsible for conservation and management of the ocean resources to which they have sovereign rights (within their EEZs). Finally, market states, where the fish are sold, should work to ensure that their seafood is coming from legal, legitimate sources.

What other multilateral efforts are there?

IUU fishing can only be combated by a whole-of-world approach, presenting an opportunity for state-to-state cooperation. Regional fisheries management organizations are working with the International Maritime Organization to boost accountability requirements aboard commercial fishing vessels across the globe. Other international bodies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are contributing to the fight as well. Interpol’s Project Scale is succeeding in catching much illegal fishing. Technology initiatives such as the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Oversea Ocean Monitor and Global Fishing Watch’s satellite-based platforms have been highly effective tools for spotting suspect activity across large spans of the ocean. And NGOs such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Greenpeace, which operate on contributions from private donors with vessels crewed by volunteers, also help build maritime domain awareness.

The world needs to collectively continue to fight the scourge of IUU fishing in order to protect sensitive marine environments and food sustainability, prevent irreparable damage to coastal economies, counter corruption and associated criminal activity, and uphold the sovereignty and security of the world’s maritime nations.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Sign up to receive CFR President Mike Froman’s analysis on the most important foreign policy story of the week, delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon. Subscribe to The World This Week. In the Middle East, Israel and Iran are engaged in what could be the most consequential conflict in the region since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. CFR’s experts continue to cover all aspects of the evolving conflict on CFR.org. While the situation evolves, including the potential for direct U.S. involvement, it is worth touching on another recent development in the region which could have far-reaching consequences: the diffusion of cutting-edge U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) technology to leading Gulf powers. The defining feature of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is his willingness to question and, in many cases, reject the prevailing consensus on matters ranging from European security to trade. His approach to AI policy is no exception. Less than six months into his second term, Trump is set to fundamentally rewrite the United States’ international AI strategy in ways that could influence the balance of global power for decades to come. In February, at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Vice President JD Vance delivered a rousing speech at the Grand Palais, and made it clear that the Trump administration planned to abandon the Biden administration’s safety-centric approach to AI governance in favor of a laissez-faire regulatory regime. “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety,” Vance said. “It will be won by building—from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future.” And as Trump’s AI czar David Sacks put it, “Washington wants to control things, the bureaucracy wants to control things. That’s not a winning formula for technology development. We’ve got to let the private sector cook.” The accelerationist thrust of Vance and Sacks’s remarks is manifesting on a global scale. Last month, during Trump’s tour of the Middle East, the United States announced a series of deals to permit the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia to import huge quantities (potentially over one million units) of advanced AI chips to be housed in massive new data centers that will serve U.S. and Gulf AI firms that are training and operating cutting-edge models. These imports were made possible by the Trump administration’s decision to scrap a Biden administration executive order that capped chip exports to geopolitical swing states in the Gulf and beyond, and which represents the most significant proliferation of AI capabilities outside the United States and China to date. The recipe for building and operating cutting-edge AI models has a few key raw ingredients: training data, algorithms (the governing logic of AI models like ChatGPT), advanced chips like Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) or Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)—and massive, power-hungry data centers filled with advanced chips.  Today, the United States maintains a monopoly of only one of these inputs: advanced semiconductors, and more specifically, the design of advanced semiconductors—a field in which U.S. tech giants like Nvidia and AMD, remain far ahead of their global competitors. To weaponize this chokepoint, the first Trump administration and the Biden administration placed a series of ever-stricter export controls on the sale of advanced U.S.-designed AI chips to countries of concern, including China.  The semiconductor export control regime culminated in the final days of the Biden administration with the rollout of the Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, more commonly known as the AI diffusion rule—a comprehensive global framework for limiting the proliferation of advanced semiconductors. The rule sorted the world into three camps. Tier 1 countries, including core U.S. allies such as Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom, were exempt from restrictions, whereas tier 3 countries, such as Russia, China, and Iran, were subject to the extremely stringent controls. The core controversy of the diffusion rule stemmed from the tier 2 bucket, which included some 150 countries including India, Mexico, Israel, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Many tier 2 states, particularly Gulf powers with deep economic and military ties to the United States, were furious.  The rule wasn’t just a matter of how many chips could be imported and by whom. It refashioned how the United States could steer the distribution of computing resources, including the regulation and real-time monitoring of their deployment abroad and the terms by which the technologies can be shared with third parties. 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What the Gulf countries lack in terms of semiconductor prowess and AI talent, they make up for with abundant capital, energy, and accommodating regulations. The Gulf countries are well-positioned for massive AI infrastructure buildouts. The question is simply, using whose technology—American or Chinese—and on what terms? In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it will be American technology for now. The question remains whether the diffusion of the most powerful dual-use technologies of our day will bind foreign users to the United States and what impact it will have on the global balance of power.  We welcome your feedback on this column. Let me know what foreign policy issues you’d like me to address next by replying to [email protected].

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