Looting the Seas I

Fishing nets – worth upwards of $100,000 each – are drawn onto a dock once bluefin are transferred to ranch cages. Felix Sanchez

Overview: The black market in bluefin

By Marina Walker Guevara, Kate Willson and Marcos Garcia Rey

Along the Mediterranean coast of France, in the city of Montpellier, prosecutors are quietly putting on trial an ancient French tradition — the fishing and trading of the majestic Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna, a sushi delicacy sold in restaurants from New York to Tokyo.

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Looting the Seas I

Bluefin fishing port Sète is nicknamed the “little Venice” of France for its cobblestone-lined channels. Kate Willson

Part I: A Mediterranean feeding frenzy

By Kate Willson and Jean-Pierre Canet

Cobblestone walkways line the quiet canals of Sète, a French community of 40,000 nestled along the Mediterranean about 85 miles west of Marseille. It is a picturesque place, bounded on one side by Mount Saint Clair and the other by the clear turquoise water of the sea. But there is more to this seemingly sleepy tourist town. 

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Looting the Seas I

Bluefin ranching: The advent of fattening tuna in coastal ranches revolutionized the bluefin trade. Marcos Garcia Rey

Part II: Diving into the tuna ranching industry

By Marcos Garcia Rey

In the final days of 1996, the air was cold and seas rough around the southern Spanish port of Cartagena. A boat belonging to the Tuna Graso sea “ranch” — a joint venture between Japan’s Mitsui & Co. and Spain’s Ricardo Fuentes & Sons — had just pulled aboard a huge 300-kilo bluefin tuna from one of its underwater pens. That single fish was worth $17,000 to the company, and would fetch far more at auction in Tokyo. 

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Looting the Seas I

A tourist eats tuna sushi near Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market.  Kyodo /Landov

Part III: Bluefin, Inc.

By Marina Walker Guevara and Martin Foster

Mount Fuji rises across the bay from the 16th century port of Shimizu — a sight fit for a post card. The town has seen better days — its businesses shuttered, fishing boats driven into bankruptcy, and the only department store closed. But the city’s core business — marine and overland trade — has assured its survival. Shimizu is the primary port of landing for tuna in Japan.

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Looting the Seas I

Bluefin tuna are dragged live to sea "ranches" in the Mediterranean, where they are fattened for months before being shot in the head and shipped to Japan. Felix Sanchez

Fishing nations approve overhaul of bluefin tuna tracking system

By Kate Willson and Marina Walker Guevara

Nearly 50 countries that trade in high-priced Eastern Atlantic Bluefin Tuna voted Saturday to transform an archaic paper-based system into an electronic fish-tracking database that will make it harder for fleets to smuggle plundered bluefin into market.

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Looting the Seas I

NOAA moves to police seas

By Traver Riggins

As part of their continuing effort to take a lead in managing global fisheries, officials with the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration told Congress earlier this month that they’ll work with six countries – singled-out for their lack of enforcement — to cut down on illegal fishing around the globe.

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Looting the Seas I

Threatened bluefin tuna may not get much help from international conference

By Kate Willson

Rejecting the tough stance of its top fisheries official, the European Union agreed Thursday to recommend similar catch limits as last year for the depleted stocks of Eastern Atlantic Bluefin Tuna.

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Looting the Seas I

French officials finally respond to allegations of doctored data

By Kate Willson

ICIJ’s Looting the Seas investigation, on the $4 billion black market in bluefin tuna, has attracted worldwide attention since its release this weekend. The series reveals how for a decade officials turned a blind eye to massive overfishing of Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna — source of the world’s most coveted sushi — and manipulated national catch figures to protect their overbuilt fishing fleets.

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Looting the Seas I

Treesaver e-reader debuts With ICIJ's Looting the Seas investigation

By John Solomon

The Center for Public Integrity on Sunday launched a new e-reader designed to make reading long-form investigative projects easier on digital platforms. The Treesaver e-reader debuted with a global investigation by the Center's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into the plundering of the majestic bluefin tuna population by an international black market.

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Looting the Seas I

Looting the Seas

By Kate Willson

As regulators gather in Paris in mid November to decide the fate of Atlantic bluefin tuna, 'Looting the Seas' reveals the sorry saga of illegal over-fishing that has led to plummeting global stocks. ICIJ reporter Kate Willson and colleagues discover that attempts to save bluefin stocks are still threatened by crucial missing data, and there's evidence that governments across the Mediterranean connived in the growth of a vast Black Market, worth US$4 billion over the last 10 years.

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