International demand for cheap seafood is fueling trade in people, and the collapse of marine ecosystems, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF).

As such, overfishing, pirate fishing and people trafficking/slavery must be addressed as interconnected issues, said the NGO, which has investigated Thailand's labor issues since 2013. Its new report examines how overfishing and IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing have caused ecosystem decline in Thailand's waters, generating pressures leading to the widespread use of slavery throughout the Thai fishing industry.

“Producers and consumers of Thai seafood are embroiled in one of the most outrageous social and ecological crimes of the 21st century. Ecosystem decline and slavery exist in a vicious cycle,” said EJF executive director Steve Trent.

“People are trafficked as a result of environmental crises and forced to endure terrible human rights abuses, while working in industries which also harm the environment.

“Unrestricted industrial exploitation damages ecosystems and exposes vulnerable populations to trafficking and abuse. Overfishing exacerbates pirate fishing, which further drives slavery and environmental degradation.”

It is vital to address overfishing, pirate fishing and slavery in Thailand as one fundamentally interconnected problem, he added as part of a new report entitled 'Pirates and Slaves'. The accompanying video can be seen below.

The starting point should be an honest appraisal of the scale and extent of the social and environmental problems facing the Thai seafood industry, and all stakeholders should cooperate to ensure the protection of marine life and the eradication of slavery at sea, he said.

A failure of government to combat both the overfishing and the slavery has been cited in the past, and is again in this report. Toothless punishments fail to act as a deterrent; for instance, a vessel apparently receives a fine of THB 5,000 for fishing within three kilometers of the coast. This is $152, and negligible for large operators.

Authorities regularly claim they lack the funding and manpower to combat illegal fishing, a Thai campaigner told EJF.

Aquaculture too has contributed to Thailand's problems. Illegal fishing has been driven by a price incentive for 'trash fish' which can be used for fishmeal, eventually ending up in shrimp feed.

Charoen Pokphand Foods - which effectively determines market rates for fishmeal in Thailand due to its purchasing power - recently introduced a policy requiring (and offering a premium for) full traceability down to the boat for its fishmeal suppliers.

This policy reportedly crossed all but one of its 50 suppliers from its books. Producers complained the dire state of monitoring, control and surveillance in the Thai industry meant compliance was a long way off for any fishmeal producer not owning and operating its own vessels.

The rapid industrialization of the Thai fleet during the twentieth century resulted in too many vessels using destructive and unsustainable fishing methods to catch too many fish, according to EJF. Overall fish catch per unit of effort in both the gulf of Thailand and Andaman Seas has plummeted by more than 86% since 1966, making Thai waters one of the most over-fished regions on the planet.

Boats now catch just 14% of what they caught in the mid-1960s, and Thailand's fish stocks and marine biodiversity are in crisis, according to the NGO's report.

As workers fled conditions aboard the vessels, catches declined and costs rose, operators had to turn to trafficked, bonded and forced labor to crew their boats.

Some 40- 50% of Thai landings also comes from unregistered pirate vessels fishing the waters of other nations, said EJF, fueling demand for a “thriving trade in modern-day slaves”.

Further nail in the coffin

EJF recently released a report stating Thailand has not made sufficient progress in fighting widespread human rights abuses in the fisheries sector to be returned to Tier 2 on the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons watchlist.

“The Royal Thai Government has delivered wholly inadequate improvement in its efforts to eliminate human trafficking in the fishing industry this year, and failed to demonstrate compliance with the minimum standards required to be raised to Tier 2,” said EJF.

In response, Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was deeply disappointed with the report. EJF’s allegations overlooked Thailand’s ongoing intensified anti-human trafficking efforts and real, positive results in many areas, the Thai government has argued.

“In 2014, the Ministry of Labour took legal actions against 156 labor brokers who violated labor laws. 107 illegal brokers were also arrested,” it said in a press release.

“In the fishery industry, the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security has integrated its victim-identification process with other relevant agencies into 'multidisciplinary teams' to systematically identify potential trafficked victims.”



Pirates and Slaves from Environmental Justice Foundation on Vimeo.