Stopping Illegal Fishing at Sea | Oceana

INCREASING TRANSPARENCY AT SEA

The Campaign to Stop Illegal Fishing

Oceana is campaigning around the world to stop illegal fishing, increase transparency of fisheries activities, and require traceability for seafood to ensure that it’s safe, legally caught, responsible sourced, and honestly labeled.

The world’s oceans face a dire threat: illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Across the globe, IUU fishing depletes marine resources, destroys habitats, and is explicitly linked to forced labor and human rights abuses.

IUU FISHING

IUU fishing can include fishing without authorization, ignoring catch limits, operating in closed areas, targeting protected wildlife, and fishing with prohibited gear. These illicit activities can destroy essential habitats, severely deplete fish populations, and threaten global food security. These actions not only contribute to overfishing, but also give bad actors an unfair advantage over honest fishers that play by the rules.

Even when fishing is done legally, there can be no accountability without transparency. Oceana is helping to shine a light on fishing activity that has previously been hidden beyond the horizon. By uncovering the offenses and abuses that are notorious with fleets fishing on the high seas and in the distant waters of other countries, Oceana is catalyzing policy change to protect our oceans and the communities that rely on them for food and jobs.

In 2016, Oceana, in partnership with SkyTruth and Google, launched Global Fishing Watch, which allows anyone in the world to monitor and track the world’s largest commercial fishing vessels in near-real time, for free Today, thanks to campaigning by Oceana and our allies, around 80,000 commercial fishing vessels – about 20% of the world’s industrial fishing fleet – can now be tracked on the Global Fishing Watch map, which helps deter instances of illegal fishing.

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Tell President Biden: Get Tough on Illegal Fishing

We must ensure that all seafood imported into the United States is safe, legally caught, responsibly sourced, and honestly labeled. Urge President Biden to get tough on illegal fishing today.

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May 21, 2025

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