June 3, 2026
Friends in Far Places: Who Supports Distant-Water Fishing fleets?
Distant-water fishing vessels sail out into the vast open ocean far from their home shores, chasing schools of tuna, squid, or other valuable species. These vessels can spend a year or more at sea before they see land again. While they may look self-sufficient disappearing over the horizon, they never truly operate alone.
Thousands of kilometers from the rolling decks of these vessels, a supporting cast of industries hums into motion – in skyscraper office buildings, coastal port cities, and even offshore platforms. Distant-water fishing fleets are kept afloat by a global network of industry: fuel suppliers, communications companies, financiers, insurers, and certifiers. Together, these “service providers” shape distant water fishing fleet operations before vessels leave port and long after land is out of sight. Importantly, this network can play a key role in cutting ties to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
Here’s a look at some of these service providers – who they are, how they support distant-water fishing, and where they could help to pull the plug on illegal fishing.
Crewing Agencies: The People Who Staff the Boat
Crewing agencies are often the first link in a chain of distant water fishing that can either protect or expose workers to harm.
Every fishing trip starts long before a vessel leaves port.
Once a vessel is built, paid for, and insured, it must be staffed with workers. Recruitment offices – often located far from the country whose flag the vessel flies – enlist crew, arrange contracts, process paperwork, and organize travel to ports where vessels are preparing to depart.
For fishing companies, these crewing agencies solve a practical problem: how to find skilled workers willing and able to spend months, or even years, at sea. For the fishers themselves, the experience can be far more complicated.
Once a fisher steps on board, the crewing agencies may have little ability to manage what happens with the crew. While many vessels are safe and hospitable for crew, some bad actors use the distance and isolation to their advantage. IUU fishing has been clearly linked with prevalence of crew mistreatment, including debt, abuse, and harsh working conditions.
Crew members on DWF vessels have often been treated differently from seafarers in other maritime industries, who benefit from relatively stronger legal protections. For instance, fishing crews are largely excluded from International Labor Organization protections. The Work in Fishing Convention (C188, 2007) aims to set minimum standards for safety, recruitment, and working conditions—but few countries have ratified it, leaving many fishers unprotected.
What begins in a city office can shape daily life on a vessel for months at a time.
Ports: Where Everything Comes Together
Ports are one of the few places where the realities of distant-water fishing come ashore, making them a critical pressure point for accountability.
Ports are their own bustling economies. At ports, vessels prepare for long trips, crew load or offload catch or supplies, and fishing companies rely on local transportation, storage, communications, and other services to keep everything moving smoothly.
Ports are also one of the few places where problems at sea can come to light. Crew members may step ashore for the first time in months. Catch and documents can be verified. Inspectors or fisheries observers can check operations. With the proper rules in place, ports can serve as an important gateway to improve oversight of fishing activities and mitigate risk of illicit practices. Peru, for instance, now requires vessels to provide vessel tracking data before they are allowed to enter port. This transparency encourages vessels to either follow the rules or divert to alternative ports.
Whether a port functions as a checkpoint or a hub for illegally-caught products depends on how these services are organized and whose interests they prioritize. The Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) which entered into force in 2016, is the first binding global treaty that empowers states to deny port entry and services to vessels suspected of IUU fishing. But when profit and convenience come first or capacity for oversight is limited, vessels can pass through with little scrutiny.
Fuel Bunkering: Staying Out Longer and Going Farther
When out at sea, fuels suppliers directly influence how far the distant-water fishing vessels can go, and how long they can stay fishing there.
Fishing far from home requires enormous amounts of fuel. Vessels burn fuel to reach distant fishing grounds, tow heavy gear, and keep catch frozen on-board.
At-sea fuel bunkering makes this possible.
Instead of returning to port, which would raise costs and increase oversight, fishing vessels can refuel by meeting fuel supply ships at sea. Imagine you’re on a long road trip through a remote part of your country – why turn off the highway every time you need gas, when the gas station can come to you? Fuel is sometimes bundled with other services, such as food deliveries, basic repairs, and crew changes. The easier it is to refuel and resupply, the further vessels can travel, the longer they can stay at sea, and the more they can fish.
However, fuel bunkering can also allow vessels to stay under the radar and catch fish illegally. Several Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) have expanded reporting rules and vessel tracking requirements to these bunkering vessels, which reflects a growing focus on transparency around at-sea fuel bunkering.
How Service Providers Can Help Combat Illegal Distant-Water Fishing
Distant-water fishing is often portrayed as a wandering lone vessel, pursuing big fish on the open sea. But the services that keep those vessels moving — who crews them, fuels them, insures them, certifies them, supplies them, and helps them pass through ports — are often overlooked.
While they operate behind the scenes, service providers are integral to producing seafood that could end up on your plate. These services are how Europe’s distant-water fleet brings in around 20% of the EU’s total catch by fishing outside of European waters. Similarly, China’s industrial distant-water fleet, the world’s largest, spent nearly 10 million hours fishing beyond its national waters between 2019 and 2021, securing about 30% of the country’s total catch in the high seas or other countries’ waters.
Understanding who and where these actors are and how they interact with each other is the first step toward engaging them more effectively in tackling IUU fishing. Some companies have already taken steps toward improved ocean stewardship and fisheries transparency. Oceana worked with business leaders in marine insurance and satellite telecommunications to commit to cutting ties with IUU fishing vessels. But there’s still more work to do. Nearly half of IUU‑listed vessels still get insured despite their risky business.
So how can more companies be brought on board to shut off the tap of support for IUU fishing at the source? For one, many service providers already follow strong rules that sit outside fisheries, like anti-money laundering laws. These efforts to maintain a good reputation can encourage companies to re-evaluate whether IUU fishing aligns with business values. Transparency and oversight could also be reframed as a competitive advantage, rather than a burden. Service providers can refuse to provide essential services (such as crew and fuel) to vessels that fail to meet certain standards.
If efforts to address IUU fishing focus solely on vessels and flags, they miss some of the most practical points of influence. Because distant-water fishing fleets don’t operate alone. They stay afloat with a little help from their friends.
For a closer look at this support system and a detailed overview of these service providers and sector-specific opportunities, see Oceana’s report Behind the Fleet: Mapping the Global Network of Service Providers Keeping Distant‑Water Fishing Afloat and npj Ocean Sustainability article Leveraging Service Providers to Improve Distant-water Fisheries Governance.
Claire Huang is the Engagement and Outreach Manager of Oceana’s Science and Strategy Team. She holds a Master’s in Environmental Management from Duke University and a B.A. in Ecology from Columbia University, and works across NGO, government, and academia to advance science-based policy making for ocean and coastal conservation.
Devanshi Kasana is the Ocean Science and Impact Fellow at Oceana’s Transparent Oceans Initiative. She holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from Florida International University and Masters in Conservation from University College London. Her research portfolio spans international fisheries governance, natural resource management, shark meat trade, and resilient blue food systems, with a focus on the intersection of conservation, policy, and communities
