Wild Tuna Steaks

Wild Tuna is captured on the “high seas,” a vast area of the ocean extending beyond sovereign jurisdictions, and meaningful enforceable law. Often, unscrupulous fishing vessels rake the ocean of all manner of life using gillnets 80 miles in length, (Urbina, 2022).

Sophisticated transactions help occlude bad players. Fish are sold to supply ships who sell at ports, who sell through networks of distributors, and finally to consumers.
Ships owned by global investors through cascading shell companies routinely change their flags seeking fewer regulations and taxes while avoiding accountability. Port states, whose primary business model is logistics related fees, generally avoid participation in regulation. Nations of the global south often have few resources to devote to such efforts and/or have weak institutions vulnerable to corruption, in any case. Layers of global distributors face varying requirements.

The industry has had persistent problems with forced labour and abhorrent working conditions. Men and boys, desperate for work, are trafficked across borders, generating unknowable amounts of debt, isolated from their language and culture, sold into debt slavery, and tortured and abused if they fail to meet ridiculous expectations, (Tickler et al., 2018).
Large commercial vessels crowd out and terrorize subsistence fishers, occasionally channeling their boredom and isolation into indiscriminate killing, (Urbina, 2015).
NGOs, international treaties, national governments, the free media, ethical product certifications (like the Marine Stewardship Council), and CSR efforts all present a smorgasbord of accountability attempts, (GFI, 2017; GFW, 2023; Marine Stewardship Council, 2023; Ocean Jewel, 2023; UN, 2023). Occasionally, these are coordinated to drive improvement. However, the overwhelming picture is a catastrophe of the commons.

As in the drug trade, and the sex trade, supply-side measures have limited power – particularly given the global dispersion and the globalized context of this problem. Enforcement of any system, even as dictated by an empowered future global government, would be difficult to deliver.
I believe consumers and retailers need to demand supply chain transparency. Each batch of fish should have provenance documents, perhaps in the form of a NFT, which tracks its origin, who handled it, and where. Fish discovered without such provenance should be consider illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) and its handlers should be prosecuted. This, of course, would be a complicated coordination and technocratic challenge, rife with trade-offs – but might deliver results.

GFI. (2017). Transnational crime and the developing world. Global Financial Integrity. https://www.gfintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Transnational_Crime-final.pdf
GFW. (2023). Commercial fishing. Global Fishing Watch. https://globalfishingwatch.org/commercial-fishing/
Marine Stewardship Council. (2023). The MSC in numbers. https://www.msc.org/en-us?gad=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwrranBhAEEiwAzbhNtY2-rQZXsuexRRc5xw6mvE-oquJQvxhm9qj7P_–k-3Fbms8FV0KXhoCk3EQAvD_BwE
Ocean Jewel. (2023). Environmental, social & governance policy. Export Packers. https://exportpackers.com/wp-content/uploads/EP-ESG-Policy-JANUARY-2023-FINAL-ua.pdf
Tickler, D., Meeuwig, J. J., Bryant, K., David, F., Forrest, J. A. H., Gordon, E., Larsen, J. J., Oh, B., Pauly, D., Sumaila, U. R., & Zeller, D. (2018). Modern slavery and the race to fish. Nature Communications, 9(1), 4643. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07118-9
UN. (2023). United nations convention on the law of the sea. United Nations Treaty Collection. https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetailsIII.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXI-6&chapter=21&Temp=mtdsg3&clang=_en#1
Urbina, I. (2015). Murder at sea: Captured on video, but killers go free. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/world/middleeast/murder-at-sea-captured-on-video-but-killers-go-free.html
Urbina, I. (2022). Outlaw ocean. CBC Podcasts and the LA Times. https://www.theoutlawocean.com/the-outlaw-ocean-podcast/