Part I
A Mediterranean feeding frenzy
How overfishing, rampant cheating, and official complicity plundered the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna.
The Black Market in Bluefin
Bluefin’s demise directly linked to widespread fraud and negligence from fishing fleets and ministry offices to the world’s largest buyers in Japan.
In this investigation
Part II
Diving into the tuna ranching industry
Sea "farms", where bluefin are fattened to increase their value, have become centers for the bluefin black market in the Mediterranean and North Africa.
By Marcos Garcia Rey | March 16, 2012
Part III
Bluefin, Inc.
For decades Japan has been the final stop of an Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna supply chain riddled with fraud, criminal misconduct, and lack of oversight.
By Marina Walker Guevara | March 16, 2012
Video: Everyone Cheated then France Came Clean
Key Findings
About This Project: Looting the Seas I
Accountability
French officials finally respond to allegations of doctored data
Trade oversight
Threatened bluefin tuna may not get much help from international conference
ICIJ exposed faulty paper-based tracking method
Fishing nations approve overhaul of bluefin tuna tracking system
The black market in bluefin
Power plays and privilege
Lords of the fish
Key findings
1
Between 1998 and 2007, more than one in three bluefin was caught illegally, creating an off-the-books trade conservatively valued at $4 billion.
2
Fishermen blatantly violated official quotas and engaged in an array of illegal practices, including misreporting catch size, hiring banned spotter planes, catching undersized fish, trading fishing quotas, and plundering tuna from North African waters where EU inspectors are refused entry.
3
National fisheries officials have colluded with the bluefin tuna industry to doctor catch numbers and avoid international criticism.
4
Sea ranches, where bluefin are fattened to increase their value, became the epicenter for “laundering” tuna in the Mediterranean and North Africa.
5
The paper-based reporting system implemented by regulators in 2008 to bring transparency to the trade is full of holes, rendering the data almost useless.
6
A widespread, off-the-books trade in bluefin tuna has existed in Japan since at least the mid-1980s.
7
While there are signs that EU officials have started to crack down, illegalities remain a serious problem. In North Africa and Turkey, even less accountable fleets are ramping up operations.
8
A wall of secrecy protects the bluefin industry. Officials in countries from Spain to Croatia failed to produce records on fishing and farming infringements. Even the European Commission denied access to fishery infraction records, citing protection of commercial interests and even “military matters."
