‘Free-for-all’ decimates fish stocks in the southern Pacific
Jack mackerel down 90 percent in 20 years in once-rich seas; world’s largest trawlers compete for what's left.
Plunder in the Pacific
As other fisheries are pushed to their limits, giant trawlers move southward toward Antarctica to catch what is left.
In this investigation
The last fish
BBC documentary spotlights ICIJ probe into fish devastation
As aggressive, unregulated fishing continues in the South Pacific, BBC World News broadcast a documentary featuring the ICIJ’s probe into the plundering of jack mackerel.
By Marina Walker Guevara | April 27, 2012
Power plays and privilege
Lords of the fish
With government backing, a handful of powerful Chilean families have secured unrealistically high fishing quotas.
By Juan Pablo Figueroa Lasch | February 27, 2012
Interactive: Where did all the jack mackerel go?
Video: El último pez
Interactive: Track the Lafayette
Graphic: Who owns the fish?
Lawmakers propose fishing ban for European fleets that target decimated jack mackerel
Dutch Parliament debates ICIJ’s Pacific overfishing investigation
Allowable catch would bypass scientists’ advice to protect the decimated jack mackerel stock
Fishing nations fail to stop plunder in the South Pacific
Anchoveta
Peru’s vanishing fish
Lords of the fish
A look at the data work
Methodology: Behind the numbers in Looting the Seas III
Sin control, gigantes pesqueros diezman el Pacífico Sur
About This Project: Looting the Seas III
Key findings
1
Asian, European and Latin American fleets have devastated fish stocks in the southern Pacific, once among the world’s richest waters.
2
Since 2006, jack mackerel stocks have declined by nearly two-thirds. The oily fish is a staple in Africa, but people elsewhere are unaware that it is in their forkfuls of farmed salmon as a vital component of fishmeal for aquaculture.
3
National interests and geopolitical rivalry have blocked efforts to ratify a regional fisheries management organization to impose binding regulations to rescue jack mackerel from further collapse.
4
In Chile, a handful of companies controlled by wealthy families own rights to 87 percent of the jack mackerel catch; with government backing, they have secured unrealistically high quotas — beyond what scientists say are essential to save the stock.
5
In Peru, the world’s second largest fishing nation, widespread cheating at fishmeal plants allows companies to overfish and evade taxes. At least 630,000 tons of anchoveta – worth nearly $200 million as fishmeal – “vanished” over two and a half years.
