The Int'l Consortium of Investigative Journalists stories from The Center for Public Integrity

About this project

2012-04-19T17:47:04-04:00

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. In its first installment ICIJ documented the massive black market in threatened bluefin tuna. In the second, it revealed that billions of dollars in subsidies flow into the Spanish fishing industry despite its record of flouting rules and breaking the law.

For the last of the three-part investigation, ICIJ reporters focused on an unlikely protagonist: the bony, bronzed-hued jack mackerel in the southern Pacific. Industrial fleets, after fishing out other waters decimated it at stunning speed. Since so much jack mackerel is reduced to fishmeal for aquaculture and pigs, we eat it unaware with each forkful of farmed salmon.

The plunder continues today as the world’s largest trawlers head south before binding quotas are established. Not long ago, this was one of the world’s richest fishing grounds.

ICIJ reporters ranged from New Zealand’s South Island to the top of Norway and from ramshackle wharves in Chile and Peru to carpeted offices in Brussels and Hong Kong. They conducted more than 100 interviews; filed freedom of information requests in the European Union, Peru and the Netherlands; and analyzed more than 100,000 catch and inspection records.

In Chile, where the damage is greatest, Juan Pablo Figueroa Lasch of the investigative reporting center CIPER looked at the few powerful families and industrial groups that control 87 percent of the jack mackerel catch. He lived aboard the Santa María II, watching as fishermen hauled up mostly empty nets.

In Peru, Milagros Salazar of IDL-Reporteros investigated another species used for fishmeal, anchoveta. It is the world’s largest fishery. She found cheating so massive — at rigged scales and unsupervised docks — that at least 630,000 tons of fish “vanished” in just two and a half years.

Fish, the reporters found, are at the heart of geopolitical wrangling among governments that protect, and often subsidize, their fleets. Mar Cabra, who covered Brussels, is still waiting for most EU records she requested through freedom of information laws. EU officials refused to give her catch records, saying disclosure would undermine the “protection of commercial interests.”

Plenty of sources spoke frankly and at length. When Mort Rosenblum asked to speak with the elusive Ng Joo Siang, head of the giant Hong Kong fishing conglomerate, Pacific Andes, the company’s outsourced public relations people refused to transmit the request. But a call to the man’s cell phone produced a lengthy and revealing interview.

Our media partners are Le Monde (France), the International Herald Tribune, El Mundo (Spain) and Trouw (The Netherlands). In addition, ICIJ is co-producing a documentary with London-based tve that is planned to air on BBC World News TV in the spring.

The team:

Project Manager: Mort Rosenblum

Editors: Marina Walker Guevara and Gerard Ryle

Reporters: Mar Cabra, Juan Pablo Figueroa Lasch, Milagros Salazar, Roman Anin, Irene Jay Liu, Kate Willson and Nicky Hager

Data Editor: David Donald

Data Analysis: Milagros Salazar and Miguel López Chauca

Web: Sarah Whitmire

Graphics: Ajani Winston

To see a comprehensive list of foundations that support ICIJ, click here.

Slideshow: Plunder in the South Pacific

2012-01-25T14:30:22-05:00

Plunder in the South Pacific

Methodology: Behind the numbers

2012-01-25T18:33:42-05:00

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.

IDL-Reporteros sought access to the official database of anchoveta landings using freedom of information in March 2011. The Ministry of Production denied access repeatedly, saying it was not public.

In this database, officials log details of every vessel landing: its estimated catch, the ship-owner, where its catch is processed, and the company that audits weighing of the fish. These measures are designed to determine how many tons are caught.

IDL-Reporteros working with ICIJ used sources to gain access to the records of more than 100,000 landings from 2009 to July 2011 – five fishing seasons. ICIJ’s investigation focused on two aspects: the catch weight declared by the fishing vessel and the amount logged at the scales inside the processing plant. A range of specialists told ICIJ a vessel’s estimate might be reasonably off by 10 percent versus the recorded weighed amount. Beyond that, discrepancies were described as suspicious. ICIJ calculated the tonnage of fish missing for all declared landings in which the discrepancy was more than 10 percent.

ICIJ focused on the north and central ports, where 90 percent of anchoveta are landed. In these regions, the same company often owns both the fishing fleets and the processing plants. This means few independent operators are liable to denounce irregularities and patterns are easier to identify.

For the first fishing season of early 2009, Peru’s control system was not fully operational. ICIJ obtained official inspection records and entered them manually in the database. ICIJ’s data team rechecked the entries.

To calculate the value of undeclared fish, ICIJ used the average price in US dollars based on monthly figures on the Ministry of Production website. The ratio of anchoveta to fishmeal was 4:3, as recommended by industry specialists.

In analyzing individual companies, ICIJ looked at how many landings had discrepancies above 10 percent between the declared catch and the logged amount. Based on that list, we looked into how recurrent these were in relation to the total number of landings of that company.

Lords of the fish

Each year, the Chilean government publishes one report on quotas for catches in different fishing regions and another that lists the tonnage allowed to each company. We analyzed jack mackerel quotas for 2011.

ICIJ reporters searched the official gazette and company websites along with records of the Superintendencia de Valores y Seguros, Chile’s securities and exchange commission. Three of the eight groups that control most of the jack mackerel fishing rights had recently merged, and the new companies were not listed as single units in quota documents.

To sketch an accurate picture, the reporters combined companies owned by a single family and totaled the quotas of separate entities that had merged. Then, they interviewed government officials, industry leaders, marine biologists, naval officers and other experts in Santiago, Valparaíso, Concepción, and in the southern ports of Talcahuano, Lota and Coronel.

Key findings: Looting The Seas

2011-11-20T17:35:32-05:00

In March 2010, a team of reporters from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists set out to document the plundering of one of the ocean’s most awe-inspiring creatures — the giant Eastern Atlantic Bluefin Tuna. Favored for its soft red flesh, bluefin tuna is prized by sushi lovers around the world. For seven months, ICIJ deployed 12 journalists to investigate the bluefin trade, a trail that led from major fishing fleets and tuna ranches in the Mediterranean and North Africa, through ministry offices, to some of the world’s largest buyers in Japan. ICIJ’s team uncovered a supply chain that at every step was riddled with fraud, negligence, and criminal misconduct.

The ICIJ investigation, Looting the Seas, relied on more than 200 interviews with fishermen, ranchers, divers, officials, scientists, and traders, as well as court documents, regulatory reports, and corporate records in ten countries, including France, Spain, Japan, and Tunisia. In addition, ICIJ gained access to an internal database used by regulators to track the trade and ran an extensive analysis of the data.

Among our findings:

Behind the plummeting stocks of Eastern Atlantic bluefin stock is a massive black market. At its peak, between 1998 and 2007, more than one in three bluefin was caught illegally, creating an off-the-books trade conservatively valued at $4 billion.
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.
National fisheries officials have colluded with the bluefin tuna industry to doctor catch numbers and avoid international criticism. France, for example, allegedly filed fraudulent catch data with the European Commission for years until it came clean in 2007.
Sea ranches, where bluefin are fattened to increase their value, became the epicenter for “laundering” tuna in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Many ranches grossly underreported the fish they had in their pens and faked releases when forced by authorities to let go of illegally-caught bluefin.
The paper-based reporting system implemented by regulators in 2008 to bring transparency to the trade — dubbed the Bluefin Tuna Catch Documentation scheme — is full of holes, rendering the data almost useless. For example, during 2008 and 2009 more than 75 percent of all purse seiner vessels catches — which comprise nearly half the overall catch — are missing crucial information that regulators need to follow the fish from vessel to market.
A widespread, off-the-books trade in bluefin tuna has existed in Japan since at least the mid-1980s. ICIJ obtained a confidential 2006 investigative report commissioned by Australia and Japan that exposed widespread overfishing and laundering into Japan of southern bluefin tuna, a sister species of the Atlantic bluefin tuna.
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.
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."

About this project: Looting the Seas

2011-09-30T15:32:24-04:00

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. ICIJ’s initial investigation focuses on the prized Eastern Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, a sushi delicacy served in restaurants worldwide. For seven months, ICIJ deployed a team of 12 journalists to investigate the bluefin trade. The project found that the demise of the bluefin was directly linked to years of widespread fraud, negligence, and lack of oversight that spanned the entire bluefin supply chain — from fishing fleets and tuna ranches to distributors.

Our Partners

ICIJ’s multinational team scoured public records and interviewed sources in ten countries. Our partners include BBC World News, Le Soir (Belgium), Stern (Germany), The Sunday Times (United Kingdom), and Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy).

The Team

ICIJ Director: David E. Kaplan

Project Director: Marina Walker Guevara

Chief Reporter: Kate Willson

Data Editor: David Donald

Reporting Team: Marcos Garcia Rey (Spain), Jean-Pierre Canet (France), Scilla Alecci (Washington, D.C.), Brigitte Alfter (Denmark), Martin Foster (Japan), Fred Laurin (Sweden), Miranda Patrucic (Croatia), Traver Riggins (Washington, D.C.), Leo Sisti (Italy), and Gul Tuysuz (Turkey)

Web Team: John Solomon, Andrew Green, Erik Lincoln, and Cole Goins

Consultant: Roberto Mielgo Bregazzi

Documentary Team: Steve Bradshaw, Bruno Sorrentino, Jenny Richards, Davina Rodrigues

Treesaver Website Design: Roger Black Studio

Graphics: Stephen Rountree

Funding

Looting the Seas is generously supported by grants from Adessium Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Waterloo Foundation. Support for this and other Center for Public Integrity projects is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the McCormick Foundation, NoVo Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Popplestone Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation.

Methodology

The ICIJ investigation relied on more than 200 interviews with fishermen, ranchers, divers, officials, scientists, and traders, as well as court documents, regulatory reports, and corporate records in ten countries: Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Malta, Spain, Japan, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United States. An extensive literature search was also made, focused on news stories, NGO reports, and scientific studies.

ICIJ also conducted analysis of internal data submitted by the Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna industry to regulators, and on the scope and size of the bluefin black market.

BCD analysis

For its analysis of the bluefin tuna trade, ICIJ also relied on internal data collected by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the intergovernmental body established to regulate the trade of tuna-like species in the Atlantic and adjacent waters, including the Mediterranean.

The data are used in a program launched in 2008 called the Bluefin Tuna Catch Document Scheme. The individual paper records are referred to as BCDs. The BCD follows a catch (a group of tuna caught at one time) from fishing vessel, through transfer to a fattening ranch, through harvest (each time fish are taken from the salt-water pens and killed) to export and finally to sale. A copy of the BCD goes to the ICCAT member state involved in that transaction. In turn, the member state forwards a copy of that paper record to the ICCAT secretariat office in Madrid. The database is password-protected and available only to a few officials in each ICCAT member state.

ICIJ was provided access to the database through an ICCAT member state. It also was provided a copy of the complete database by a confidential source. The most recent update of the data set was completed in summer 2010, the most recent data available for its analysis.

Focusing on 2008 and 2009, ICIJ examined allegations that the database was ineffective at tracking fish from catch to sale. If such findings were confirmed, then by extension it would bring into question the ability of the system to police the trade. ICIJ crosschecked the raw data provided by the source by taking a random sampling of the source’s records and comparing them to the records in the BCD database. The accuracy of the source’s data was confirmed.

Finding the data in an inconsistent state, ICIJ cleaned and regularized names and other attributes before doing basic analysis. Some queries of specific interest included: percentage of entries without complete information, cases in which the individual mean weight of the entire catch was exactly at the minimum allowable size, cases in which more fish were harvested (killed for export) than were transferred into fattening ranches, and vessels that reported fishing more than legally allowed under their ships’ quotas.

ICIJ attempted to seek out data analysts at the ICCAT Secretariat to discuss the findings. Officials there declined the request.

Black market estimate

ICIJ used diverse sources to piece together an estimate of the black market in bluefin tuna. Many of these sources provided data — on annual catch and market prices — that themselves were only estimates. In each case, ICIJ took the lower end of the estimate so that the final calculation was as conservative as possible. The total bluefin tuna catch figures from 1998 to 2007 come from ICCAT’s Report of the Standing Committee on Research and Statistics, October 4 to 8, 2010. In describing the catch figures, ICCAT scientist Jean-Marc Fromentin, one of the report’s authors, said the committee estimated the total catch by looking at each vessel’s capacity, the number of actual days at sea, and the amount a vessel would need to catch to remain viable.

To estimate the size of the overcatch for each year, ICIJ compared the estimated total catch to the specific quota set by ICCAT in its Biannual Report series. That comparison provides the number of tons of bluefin tuna illegally caught and traded above the quota by year.

To determine the dollar value in the market, ICIJ used data from the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, or Tsukiji Market, where bluefin tuna are traded, and from Japan’s Fisheries Agency. ICIJ calculated an average yen-per-ton price from 1998-2007 and converted yen to dollars using an average annual exchange rate.

Key findings

China — 2012-02-02T12:11:24-05:00

In the fall of 2009, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists began delving into industry efforts in developing countries to promote the use of asbestos — a known carcinogen banned or restricted in 52 countries. During nine months of research, the ICIJ team in partnership with the BBC documented the activities of a global network of industry groups, led by the Canadian government-backed Chrysotile Institute, which has helped fuel use of the toxic mineral in nations such as China, India, Brazil and Mexico. With the help of industry-funded scientists, these groups have influenced government regulations and fought off attempts to ban the cheap, fire-resistant construction and insulation material.

Among our team’s findings:

A global network of industry groups has spent nearly $100 million in public and private money since the mid-1980s to keep asbestos in commerce. Based in Montreal, Mexico City, New Delhi, and other cities, these groups share information and coordinate public-relations initiatives touting “controlled use” of chrysotile, or white, asbestos, the only form of the fiber used today.
Because controlled use is nearly impossible to achieve in developing nations, where workplace and environmental standards are weak, the industry campaign is helping create new epidemics of asbestos-related disease, according to public health experts. Among the countries that will be hit hardest: China, the world’s top consumer; and India, where use is growing at the rate of 30 percent annually.
The industry campaign contends that white asbestos is less toxic than blue and brown forms of the mineral, which are no longer used. Many researchers and health officials believe, however, that the science is unsettled and that white asbestos may in fact be as dangerous as blue or brown.
Despite mounting scientific evidence of the risks of white asbestos and calls from health experts for a global ban, asbestos production is holding steady at about 2 million metric tons per year, with Russia producing nearly half of the world’s supply.
Each year, 100,000 workers die of asbestos-related diseases such as mesothelioma and lung cancer, according to the International Labor Organization. Some scientists predict that asbestos will take up to 10 million lives worldwide by 2030. The World Health Organization says that 125 million workers are still exposed to asbestos.
Canada remains a major exporter of asbestos, primarily to India, over the strong objections of health professionals, activists, and some politicians. Canada itself now uses little asbestos but its federal and provincial governments have subsidized the industry with C$35 million since 1984.