Photo: Yousuf Tushar/LightRocket/Getty Images
The Center for Strategic and International Studies Stephenson Ocean Security Project and Human Rights Initiative held the Ocean Security and Human Rights Forum with the US Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing & Labor Rights Coalition on Thursday, June 5, 2025. Since 2017, June 5 has marked the UN International Day for the fight against IUU Fishing. This year’s forum brought together ocean and fishing experts, civil society leaders, and human rights lawyers to discuss the changing nature of U.S. ocean policy, how these changes will affect regional security relationships, and the United States’ ability to secure domestic supply chains to ensure fair markets and support labor rights at home and abroad.
Dr. Max Valentine opened the event by introducing the US IUU Fishing & Labor Rights Coalition’s work leveraging U.S. Government mechanisms through collaboration across sectors. Throughout the panels, several vignettes emphasized how the complex nature of these issues required collaboration across the U.S. Government, including the Department of Defense, the State Department, NOAA, USAID, and other agencies, including programs that recently received funding cuts. Between the panels, participants watched a documentary clip from “Before you Eat”, a documentary by Indonesia Migrant Workers Union with support from Greenpeace Indonesia. The documentary depicted worker experiences and systemic issues within the fishing industry.
Kelly Kryc, Steve Brock, and Max Valentine discussed the United States' strategy to combat IUU fishing and paths forward to obtain additional regulations to ensure transparency. In 2022, the U.S. Interagency Working Group on IUU Fishing released its wide-reaching National 5-Year Strategy for Combating IUU Fishing. The strategy relies on coordination across 21 government agencies and multilateral coordination.
Panelists expressed concern that recent funding cuts to federal agencies are already preventing the United States from making progress toward achieving the goals of the strategy. The elimination of staff and funding for NOAA and USAID programs, and the comparatively small budget provisions for the U.S. Navy’s efforts to collaborate with the U.S. Coast Guard to address IUU fishing, will impact the United States’ ability to lead on this issue. Ultimately, seafood tainted with IUU fishing means an unstable seafood supply chain and the inability of U.S. fishing to compete with PRC and other markets. While a billion people depend on seafood in their diets, the issue of IUU fishing must be addressed from both the lens of great power competition and global food security.
Dr. Max Valentine provided statistics from an Oceana analysis published June 5, 2025, on China's global fishing activity from 2022-2024. The analysis shows that China accounted for 44 per cent of visible fishing activity worldwide, while China has less rigorous regulations on IUU fishing than the United States. Meanwhile, 90 per cent of seafood in the United States is imported from other countries. To ensure unregulated seafood does not end up on American plates, the United States needs to work toward stronger transparency, stronger traceability laws and import control regulations in every major market state, and capacity building for U.S. allies to regulate and monitor their own workers and fishing vessels.
The second panel focused on the challenges workers and fishers in the seafood supply chain face—specifically forced labor and related human rights abuses—as well as policy recommendations for increasing seafood traceability and enforcement. Martina Vandenburg, Nathan Rickard, and Allison Gill discussed current and past successes: The IUU coalition brought together human rights practitioners and trade policy experts; Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) released a May 28 Withhold Release Order against the Chinese-flagged ship Zhen Fa 7 due to reasonable suspicious of forced labor; and the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is a key tool that increases risk for companies using forced labor in their supply chains. Allison Gill emphasized the structural reasons for the difficulties of securing a WRO; once a WRO against a vessel is secured, importers simply drop the vessel from their list.
The audience asked how traceability tools, such as NOAA’s Seafood Import Monitoring Program, could benefit fishers if they were implemented. All panelists further recognized the importance of traceability for enforcement and noted the concerning loss of key U.S. funded data tools from USAID and ILAB, noting that civil society cannot fill this gap. Traceability tools, unions, and organizers must all work on behalf of fishers. Progress will only be made in Washington when fishers are directly involved in conversations.
Each panelist concluded with the next steps on the path forward to accountability. Allison Gill described that fishers must be given access to Wi-Fi onboard vessels, enabling them to contact their unions and report injuries, receive medical care, and protect against debt bondage and other forms of abuse. Martina Vandenberg emphasized the need for more WROs from CBP with serious remediation that involves unions and workers. Nathan Rickard noted increased enforcement and talked about how public awareness will put consumer pressure on seafood brands.
Oceana's recent report on China's global fishing activity can be read here.
You can view the full event here and the event transcript here.
