Looting the Seas III

Video: El último pez [Spanish only]

By International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Reporter Mar Cabra discusses the 'Looting the Seas III' investigation in this video produced by El Mundo.

Looting the Seas III

Peru’s anchoveta is the world’s largest fishery. Most of it is reduced to fishmeal, a feed for farmed fish and pigs.

Milagros Salazar/ICIJ

Peru’s vanishing fish

By Milagros Salazar

This northern port reeks of rotten fish year-round, but when anchoveta season begins in late November, its long row of factories belch oily columns of nauseating smoke that impregnate everything within miles.

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Looting the Seas III

After years of intensive fishing, jack mackerel stocks in the southern Pacific have declined dramatically. Some experts say the only way to save the fishery is to impose a total ban for five years.

Periódico El Ciudadano

Sin control, gigantes pesqueros diezman el Pacífico Sur

By Mort Rosenblum and Mar Cabra

Eric Pineda se asomó a la bodega del Achernar y sólo vio diez míseras toneladas de jurel después de haber estado faenando durante cuatro días. Hace un par de décadas, las aguas del Pacífico Sur eran tan ricas en pescado que se podía llenar ese barco de casi 18 metros de eslora en apenas unas horas.

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Looting the Seas III

Slideshow: Plunder in the South Pacific

By The Int'l Consortium of Investigative Journalists

During the 1990s, Chileans caught more than 28 million metric tons of jack mackerel. Today, as stocks plummet, vessels struggle to find fish. 

Juan Pablo Figueroa Lasch/ICIJ

Chilean fishermen aboard the vessel Achernar haul a meager load of jack mackerel up from the hold.

Mort Rosenblum/ICIJ

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Fishermen sort jack mackerel aboard the Achernar before the catch is transferred by truck to a nearby fishmeal plant.

Mort Rosenblum/ICIJ

From New Zealand’s Waiheke Island, activist Martini Gotje tracks fleets across the Pacific and beyond, compiling a black list of vessels that fish illegally.

Mort Rosenblum/ICIJ

A crewman stands among a small load of jack mackerel aboard the Achernar. In better days, the hold was full within hours. 

Mort Rosenblum/ICIJ

Jack mackerel sold at market in Valpariso, on Chile’s coast. 

Valerie Schenkman

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A fishmeal plant in the southern Chile port of Lota. Jack mackerel is turned into feed for aquaculture and pigs.

Juan Pablo Figueroa Lasch/ICIJ

Along with industrial vessels, small-scale Peruvian fishermen survive by catching anchoveta not far from shore. 

Milagros Salazar/ICIJ

Jack mackerel, fresh off the boat, is prepared for markets in Peru.

Mort Rosenblum/ICIJ

A fresh catch of anchoveta heads to a fishmeal plant in Peru. Peruvian anchoveta is the world’s largest fishery.

Milagros Salazar/ICIJ

At the China Fishery Group fishmeal plant in La Planchada, Peru, few outsiders are allowed past the gate. CFG is a subsidiary of seafood giant Pacific Andes International Holdings from Hong Kong.

Milagros Salazar/ICIJ

Jack mackerel populations are so low off Chile’s coast that fleets have not reached their full quotas since 2007.

Juan Pablo Figueroa Lasch/ICIJ

Looting the Seas III

Methodology: Behind the numbers

By The Int'l Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Peru is second only to China as a fishing nation, and its main catch is anchoveta. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, with the Lima-based investigative center IDL-Reporteros, decided to analyze how the anchoveta fishery — the world’s largest — was regulated and controlled.

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Looting the Seas III

About this project

By The Int'l Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Looting the Seas is an award-winning project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists looking at forces that are rapidly emptying oceans of fish.

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Looting the Seas

Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co., left, cuts a bluefin tuna in front of his Sushi Zanmai restaurant near Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo Thursday, Jan. 5, 2012. The bluefin tuna caught off northeastern Japan fetched a record 56.49 million yen, or about $736,000, in the first auction of the year at the fish market. 

Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo

Record-setting $736,000 paid for bluefin tuna poor indicator of scarcity

By Corbin Hiar

While the bluefin tuna is widely acknowledged to be overfished, the price paid Thursday for one 593-pound catch isn’t a clear sign of just how endangered the tuna has become.

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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 II

Regulators around the world have pointed to Vidal Armadores in more than 40 allegations of illegal fishing. The company's co-owner, Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego, is pictured here with unidentified acquaintances. He says he is the victim of an international conspiracy by big fishing nations.

New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries

‘Pirate’ fleet owner convicted of fish fraud

By Kate Willson and Mar Cabra

A Spanish ship-owner with a voluminous record of skirting international laws – and who swears he has never fished illegally – has been sentenced in Spain to one year and eight months in prison for trying to unload fish caught by one of his vessels.

An Australian patrol boat spotted the Hammer, owned by Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego, fishing without authorization in protected Antarctic waters in December 2005. In an attempt to mask the source of those fish, Vidal Pego twice renamed the vessel, finally settling on Chilbo San 33 and registering the ship in North Korea. The shipment of 240 tons of Chilean sea bass was confiscated by South Korean authorities after it was sold for more than $2.7 million to Uruguay-based Coast Line S.A., an affiliate of the Spanish seafood company Freiremar.

According to the sentencing documents, Vidal Pego masked from his trade partners that he had used a boat blacklisted for having previously circumvented international regulations. Once a boat lands in a black list it is banned from fishing in protected Antarctic waters.

Vidal Pego's lawyer said in court that the charge stems from an error on the company’s import declaration and has appealed the case.  “We’re sure we will win, because we’re right,” said Foro Hernández, spokesperson for Vidal Pego, in an interview with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

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Looting the Seas II

Nine organizations of the Spanish fishing industry attacked ICIJ's 'Looting the Seas II' investigation during a press conference in Madrid.

Mar Cabra/ICIJ

IMPACT: Fishing industry rep calls ICIJ investigation an 'explosive cocktail that damages the Spaniards'

By Mar Cabra

The latest investigation of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is part of an “international campaign against Spain and its fishing industry," representatives of the Spanish fishing industry announced at a press conference held today in front of the Spanish Fishing Secretariat in Madrid.

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Inside this investigation