The Center for Public Integrity

The most commonly consumed fish in Spain is hake. Based on allegations of fraud in the hake market, ICIJ carried out a DNA study on hake in the Spanish market.

Last year a team of Spanish and Greek researchers at the University of Oviedo and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki published a study on high levels of apparently intentional mislabeling of hake imports in their respective countries.

Southern African hake species were mainly being marketed as European or South American Hake. European and South American hakes are worth double the amount of southern African hakes, researchers noted. Following publication, the Spanish government requested a copy of the study, but the official report did not include company names. The lead researcher Eva García Vázquez told ICIJ she would have provided the names associated with the mislabeled samples had officials asked.

The researchers also experienced complaints from industry. So when ICIJ requested the company identities, García declined to share that information. ICIJ decided to undertake its own snapshot study in Madrid –Spain’s capital– to determine if mislabeling was still occurring. ICIJ commissioned García Vázquez and her team at the University of Oviedo to conduct a second study to determine the extent of mislabeling in the fresh and frozen hake markets.  

DNA experts told ICIJ our methodology was sound and simple. Geneticist Einar Neisen from the National Institute of Aquatic Resources at the Technical University of Denmark called the work “a walk in the park” as it was easy to identify the different species. The case might have been different if ICIJ were trying to determine the geographical locations among samples of the same species.

Decades of overfishing have left Europe’s fish stocks in peril and its fishermen in poverty. It’s an impasse paid for by EU taxpayers. Yet a proposed revision of the EU's fishing law, hailed as sweeping reform, is rapidly losing momentum.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists acquired data on public aid benefiting the Spanish fishing industry between the years 2000-2010. As the European Union’s most powerful fishing nation, Spain is its largest recipient of fishing subsidies.

The World Trade Organization defines fisheries subsidies as “a financial contribution by the public sector that provides private benefits to the fisheries sector.” The contribution can be direct or indirect (such as tax breaks). Worldwide estimations on fisheries subsidies exist, but no detailed analysis of real spending has been conducted of the Spanish fishing industry, which is the largest recipient of fishing aid in the European Union – the world’s third largest fishing “nation.”

To obtain the amounts related to direct government payments to the industry, ICIJ analyzed datasets from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Spain’s central government, and autonomous communities (regions) within Spain to account for public aid flowing to the industry between 2000-2010.

To help in the analysis, ICIJ hired software developer David Cabo, vice-president of Pro Bono Publico, a non-profit organization based in Spain devoted to transparency and open records issues.

For EU funding under the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance (FIFG) for 2000-2006, ICIJ relied on raw data provided by the Directorate General to the non-profit transparency advocacy group Fishsubidy.org in December 2008. ICIJ requested the data directly from the Directorate General, the body in charge of publishing data from 2000-2006. Although it once provided the data to Fishsubsidy.org, the Directorate General said it would not release any more data until the operational programs were completed, which may take years.

Looting the Seas is a two-year project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists looking at the forces that are rapidly depleting the oceans of fish. This new installment in the series focuses on Spain, the most powerful fishing nation in a region where economies and fish stocks are in shambles. 

An ICIJ team set out to investigate how Spain’s fishing industry wielded that power at home, in Brussels and overseas.  
 
Reporters from Spain, Uruguay, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, Belgium, Namibia and the United States dug through thousands of pages of scientific reports, court files, investigation reports and official correspondence. The team analyzed reams of subsidy data, employed DNA testing and conducted more than 200 interviews with politicians, fishermen, lobbyists, inspectors, prosecutors, economists and scientists.
 
A detailed methodology is included here. 

Our media partners are The Sunday Times (UK), El País (Spain), EU Observer (Brussels), Huffington Post (US) and Trouw (The Netherlands)

The team:

Project Manager: Kate Willson

Editors: Marina Walker Guevara and Fredrik Laurin

Reporters: Mar Cabra, Marcos García Rey, John Grobler, Nicky Hager and Brigitte Alfter

Data Editor: David Donald

Data Analysis: David Cabo and Mar Cabra

Web: Sarah Whitmire

The U.S. will continue to play a role in satiating a ravenous global appetite for bluefin tuna. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced today that “based on careful scientific review” it will not list Atlantic Bluefin tuna under the Endangered Species Act, a decision both lauded and admonished by those in the hot-topic arena.

A listing would have banned all U.S. fishing and trade of the globally popular sushi delicacy. Instead, the administration has placed the fish on a watch list as a species of concern. NOAA says it will revisit its decision in 2013 when more scientific information is available.

The Gulf of Mexico, where the Deepwater Horizon oil spill took place last spring, is the only known spawning ground for Western Atlantic Bluefin tuna. The spill’s potential damage on the bluefin population prompted a petition from the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity to protect the species under the Endangered Species Act.

Larval surveys from 2010 show that the bluefin population is on target with historical averages, said Clay Porch, director of the Sustainable Fisheries Division at the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Fisheries Science Center. However the samples on which this conclusion is based were taken before the oil spill happened.

By waiting two years for a follow-up assessment, when the agency believes it will have more conclusive information on the spill’s effects, NOAA is “just watching the bluefin tuna go extinct,” said Catherine Kilduff, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.