IUU Fishing & Forced Labor Risk

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems and local economies that rely on the fishing industry. Predatory fishing practices by foreign vessels at fishing hotspots violate countries’ jurisdictions, causing local stocks to deplete and disrupting the local food chain.

As the number of IUU fishing events increases and expands into new geographical areas, the threat imposed by these operations now goes well beyond environmental and natural resource concerns.

The motivation behind illegal fishing activities is not just the economic benefits resulting from the catch. There is a growing trend of long-distance fishing vessels that use supporting fleets to establish a permanent presence regardless of seasonal limitations and to disguise criminal behaviors, such as depletion of natural resources, human trafficking, food fraud, tax evasion, and many more.

In the past couple of years, domestic and long-distance fishing fleets have been used for more than just maximizing the catch from each fishing zone. They are becoming essential tools for maintaining presence, asserting power, and enabling geopolitical expansion. Governments and organizations must go beyond merely looking at illegal fishing and start investigating the security risks IUU fishing operations pose.

IUU fishing often involves forced labor, a form of human trafficking, and other crimes and human rights abuses. Left unchecked, labor abuses associated with IUU fishing can undermine economic competitiveness, national security, fishery sustainability, and the human rights of fishers around the world.

Fishing is a legitimate practice, with permits allowing licensed vessels to fish in international waters, but some illicit actors choose to disguise themselves as fishing vessels to engage in criminality. Recently, a few networks of state-owned vessels acting as fishing vessels were uncovered using fishing identities and operations to conceal illegal activities, such as drug and weapon smuggling, human trafficking, and more.

Windward’s behavior-based model, powered by innovative Maritime AI™ and domain expertise, is designed to look further than dynamic monitoring of illegal fishing, supporting law enforcement entities, shipping companies, intelligence units, and financial institutions in their investigations of the broader criminal and political implications of IUU fishing and forced labor operations.

• Reveal connections between IUU fishing fleets and their supporting fleets
• Investigate geopolitical expansion attempts
• Monitor changed fishing patterns and anomalies
• Unique forced labor indications based on historical port calls and behavioral analysis
• Full screening process for both white and black IUU fishing lists