The absence of transparency measures leads to things like, are you you phishing, fisheries mismanagement, fraud and corruption in fisheries decision making and even human rights abuses in the fisheries sector. Overfishing is a major problem all over the world in the ocean. It doesn't matter if it's near a coastline, it doesn't matter if it's in the high seas. Every country struggles with ensuring that fisheries species like the species that are fished are actually managed properly. A lot of the countries that we are operating in or partnering with have specific rules attached to specific species. What we would really like to see is a much pardon the pun but a much broader net cast where more of these species are falling under these import control schemes and things like that so that we have better data on all of the species that are being caught. There are some that species that have sustainable fisheries and there are some that just don't and it's very difficult to control because there are a lot of players at play. You have the government, you have the industry and then you have the scientists and conservationists that try and feed information into both processes government and industry to be able to get the right number of say set it to set a quota or to make sure that management is put forth. Now with that complexity you've put in political will and you put in voters and campaign contributors and you get a lot more complex in how things roll out. It can be really sticky situation. What adds to that complexity is the fact that we don't have a lot of information about most of the fisheries that happen around the world. That means a specific species that is fished may not have the amount of information that we need as scientists and conservationists to be able to set quota for government to manage properly as well as as industry. It could be very difficult. We saw the same thing in maritime security where within a single country you might not have the Coast Guard talking to the Ministry of Fisheries and that's a challenge. But it's also just not something that they've ever been faced with before that they might not even know it's a challenge. And there are some like I said there's some bad players and there's some good players and the bad players are greedy and they just want as much money as possible. The good players want to be able to fish forever and be able to pass it on to generations to come. So how do we manage data that we don't have a lot of? The big thing is is transparency. Being able to find out how we can get as much data as possible and sharing that data and sharing how the data came to be and the methods to get that data, the methods of fishing with other players around the world. In comes the coalition of fisheries transparency. It's a global network of civil society organizations working to advance fisheries transparency measures to ensure the sustainability and equitability of the fisheries sector. And today I have the director of that coalition, Maisie Pigeon, who is here to talk about the work that the coalition has done in the two years since its inception and the work that it plans to do in the future and hopes to do and gives us a lot of information on the complexity as well as some of the strides that have been made by a variety of different countries. So we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And if you haven't been here before or this is the first time you listen to this podcast or watch this video podcast on YouTube and Spotify, you can say to every people like I found the resource to keep me updated on what's happening in the ocean. All that stuff where I get that climate anxiety, that ocean anxiety where I worry about what's being protected around the planet, especially this resource that is covering 70 over 70% of the planet, I know where to go. And that is SpeakUpForBlue.com to get all my information on the latest podcasts on the ocean, on wildlife management, on ocean management, everything you want to know, you can get at SpeakUpForBlue.com. And if you want that information to your inbox Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern time, you can do so by signing up to our newsletter, go to SpeakUpForBlue.com/newsletter and you get that information sent to your inbox Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. So at SpeakUpForBlue.com/newsletter, let's start this show. So this is a topic that I've been wanting to talk about for a long time. And Maisie's team reached out to me and said, "Hey, do you want to talk about fisheries transparency?" And I said, "Absolutely, I do. And you're probably wondering why does this matter? And why don't we have this information before? Like, why do we not have enough information?" If you remember a couple of years ago or a year ago, I had on someone from Oceania, Canada, we talked about sort of the state of stock assessments and fisheries in Canada. And the big thing there, the big conclusion was we don't have a lot of information on most of the fisheries that are available. And they're going to be putting out another, if they're not already put it out already, they're going to be putting out another stock assessment sort of evaluation. And we're going to find out probably the same thing that we do not have enough information on enough of the fishery stocks that are being fished around the world or around Canada. Imagine what that is around the world. There are a lot of different countries. They all have their own practices and their own rules and their own set of regulations. Not all of them are equal. Some of them are a little bit behind. Some of them are really advanced, but it's not all there. And that's really hindering better management of fisheries by not knowing what we have to manage. And Maisie will point out in this interview that not having that information can lead towards the extinction or the collapse of a fishery of a specific species. And so we're going to talk a lot about how important transparency is, how the coalition started, why it started, and what the purpose is in this interview with Maisie Pigeon, enjoy, and I will talk to you after. Hey Maisie, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about transparency and fisheries? Absolutely. Let's do it. All right. This is a topic that I've been wanting to have on the podcast for a long time. And when you contacted me and your staff contacted me to be like, Hey, Andrew, would you like to talk about this on your podcast? I'm like, absolutely. Yes, I'm going to respond, respond, respond as quickly as possible. Because I find when we get into the just the topic of overfishing and fisheries in general, it's it's it can feel disconnected from anybody who's listening to this podcast, even myself, sometimes I'm just like, do I have any control over this? Do I have enough information on this? How can I do better either as an individual or as like a volunteer for an organization such as Oceano or anything like that? How can I support this type of work in any way possible? And so it's great to have yourself on to be able to explain this to us. Now, we're going to get your title in just a second, but we're going to get involved into like, you know, illegal, unreported and keep free. Last one, and what's the long unregulated, unregulated, shoot, and unregulated fisheries. We've talked about in the past before, we're going to really get down into it. How do we combat it? How do we, we address it with other countries and so forth. So we're going to get into all that. But before we do, Maisie, why don't you just let us know who you are and what you do. Sure. My name is Maisie Pigeon. I'm the director of the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency. Nice. Very, very nice. Now, how does one become the director of an organization of sort of like a coalition like this? Because, you know, this is, I want you to just let us know a little bit more about the coalition first, and then we'll kind of talk a little bit about your background, how you got there. Yeah. Absolutely. So the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency is a network of 50 civil society member organizations, and we have members across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, Oceania, and all of those organizations are working to improve fisheries governance and sustainability through advancing fisheries transparency policies. The framework around which we work is something called the Global Charter, which I'm sure we'll speak about later, but it's a set of 10 policy principles around fisheries transparency, the best practices in fisheries transparency in the areas of vessel information, fishing activity, and governance and management. Gotcha. Okay. Look, I now, this makes me even want to get into it even more. Before we do, I just want to get a little background on you, Maisie. So how does one become a director? Like, where did it all start? Where did your love for the ocean start? How did it all begin? Um, so I have been in this position for just over two years. Um, and prior to that, I spent, uh, about a decade and a half working in maritime security. Um, so I originally started working in counter-piracy. Um, and that evolved into all other kinds of maritime crime, including illegal and reported and then regulated fishing, um, as well as, uh, wildlife trafficking by maritime modes and things like that. Um, so I've worked for NGOs. I have been a consultant for the UN and the European Union, um, as well as the US government. Gotcha. Okay. So this is interesting. You know, it's funny is when you said counter-piracy right at the beginning, you know, I think people think piracy now of videos and, uh, and other things, but now we're talking about like actual pirates, actual piracy on the water. Like, I think the closest we could probably, um, really relate to is sort of the pirates in, in Somalia that, you know, we're attacking supply boats and there was a famous movie starring Tom Hanks who, you know, really sort of displayed, um, sort of what would happen and how dangerous it could be. Uh, what, like, what, like, how prevalent is piracy still today? Like in the modern world today? Well, when I started working on it, uh, that was really sort of the height of the Somali piracy crisis that you're talking about. Um, in which case we were seeing, you know, anywhere from 50 to 100 attacks every single year off the coast of Somalia. And, um, increasingly we saw lots off the coast of West Africa and in the Sulu and celibacy as well. Um, and eventually even into Latin America. Um, thankfully at this point in history, we have, uh, decreased the annual piracy attack numbers. Um, and I think a lot of that is due to international cooperation, uh, which is sort of brings us back to where we are now talking about IU fishing and some of the tools we might have in the tool belt to combat that problem. Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about that. The IU fishing. So we, we kind of, I, I kind of defined it very poorly at the beginning of this episode. Uh, can you just talk about, you know, what it is, uh, and sort of what it's like the problems that it's causing, uh, in fisheries today and trying to track the true number of fisheries. So I'll actually start by talking a little bit more about transparency and what the lack of transparency can do, uh, can enable, I should say. Yes. That's all right. Um, but the absence of transparency measures leads to things like IU fishing, um, fisheries mismanagement, fraud and corruption in fisheries decision making. Um, and even human rights abuses in the fisheries sector, uh, is unfortunately something that we see as well. The downriver effects of this kind of fisheries mismanagement, um, which is sort of the broad umbrella, uh, that IU would fall under. I would, I would say includes overexploited fishery stocks. Um, food insecurity is a major concern, uh, and risks to the livelihoods of residents of these coastal communities and places like West Africa or, uh, Pacific Island nations, for instance. Meanwhile, we would say transparency is the tool at our disposal to combat these kinds of challenges. They are, these measures are generally speaking low cost and easily implemented. Um, um, and I think that the really critical thing, which is something I bring from my past in maritime security is that more and better information enables informed and inclusive decision making, which brings everybody to a seat at the table. From the government perspective too, it, it lends credibility. It demonstrates the government's trustworthiness to citizens because they're, they're sharing information and they're including them in the process. Um, so to us, transparency measures are really a win-win for all of the stakeholders involved. For sure. Now, you know, if, if it, if it has so many benefits, why are we talking about it now? Like why isn't it just something that we have in every government where there's transparency? Where is the incentive to not be transparent for, for when it comes to fisheries work, where it comes to a point where we need a coalition for fisheries transparency? I think there's a couple of different, um, ways that you could frame this. I think they're, the fishery sector is one in which there are some corrupt actors working. Um, where a small number of people are becoming enriched by overselling fishing licenses or something like that. Um, so that's one part of the problem. The other part of the problem though, and I think probably the more common place one is there's just a lack of understanding of what fisheries transparency can do. Um, these infrastructures are not necessarily in place, uh, in places. Um, and there are a lot of competing voices telling these governments that they're, they, the fishing industry doesn't want additional measures, uh, to abide by. Um, so it can be a kind of complicated set of challenges that we're up against. I feel like entire like international fisheries in general, um, what, even whether you're looking on a national scale, it feels like it's, it's complex, right? Like this is not an easy problem to solve. I mean, if it was, it was probably would have been solved a long time ago. So there's, you know, you've mentioned some of the complexities and some of the problems from a human rights point of view, obviously, in terms of what we call fisheries slavery, um, and, and, and other acts that, that have occurred through a lot of the sort of these bad players and, and so forth. But you know what, I feel like with overfishing, that kind of is one of the major problems with the ocean. It feels as though a lot of, it feels almost like there's a blanketed in some movies have highlighted this where there's this like blanket of negative view of any kind of fishing, you know, in any kind of fisheries, you know, to the point where people like the only way we can really get over overfishing is if everybody stops eating fish, you and I know that will never happen. There's too many people that depend on the protein stores, worldwide that will happen. And even people who don't necessarily need to depend on it will still want to have fish. So we know that's not sort of low, but we also know that it's not all fishing is bad. So I guess like, you know, where I really wanted to go with this was when we talk about fishing and, and transparencies, there's, there's, there are, you know, some fisheries where, you know, there, there's, there's larger than there's, there's small fisheries, right? And when we talk about transparencies, like where do we begin in terms of where's transparency needed when we manage fisheries? Oh, yeah. Okay. I hear you. So I think some of the positive examples here are generally sort of fishery bite fishery and just in case your listeners are not necessarily fisheries biologists, which I am also not for the record. When I referred to a fishery, I mean a specific species of fish. So maybe that squid or maybe that's yellowfin tuna. So a lot of the countries that we are operating in or partnering with have specific rules attached to specific species. What we would really like to see is a much, pardon the pun, but a much broader net cast. Where more of these species are falling under these import control schemes and things like that. So that we have better data on all of the species that are being caught. Got you. So everybody is part of the information that comes in. So for instance, I know in Canada, we've talked to Oceania Canada before they've come in and they've done their annual report on where the fisheries stock assessments are and where our fisheries management is. And a lot of the times there's lack of data for a number of species. So it's really difficult to gain an understanding of where they're at, whether they're critically endangered in danger or they're doing really well. We have no idea because there's a lot of lack of information of those species. And a lot of the times as we know from just ocean biology and how it's changed over the last number of decades is that we've seen a change in like going from looking at more of a habitat style, like an ecosystem management base management scheme rather than a species by species basis. Because you never know if you're fishing yellowfin tuna, you're going to affect other species. That's right. That's a long lining or what have you, right? And so and gill nets can also affect other species. There's a lot of gear that comes down to it. Absolutely. Yeah, I see what you mean by that. I should also say that a lot of countries, for instance, were working in East Asia with Japan and Korea and they have started their import control schemes by looking at high risk species. And this is of course a really logical starting point. From the perspective of the coalition, any progress is good progress. And we understand that countries are not operating from the same starting point. So like regardless of where you are, we want to work with you. Yeah, for sure. Like obviously, yeah, that's an important point to stay home is like, not every country has made it a priority in the past, even though they might be a coastal country and depend on its fisheries. It took a while before the US and Canada probably tracked cod. Yeah, right. So we were probably on the downfall a lot before than we knew when it comes down to that for Atlantic Cod. It's really interesting when you talk about this coalition, you're talking about working with different countries, when it first started, how many countries were involved? Or did it really go? Like did you did the coalition have, I guess, first of all, did the coalition have as many organizations a part of it? I think you mentioned about 50 organizations that have as many when it first started, or have you been bringing people on as you go along? We have been bringing people in as we've gone along. And part of that is organic, as you might imagine, but a lot of that has been that my team and I have been working with our other partners, whether that's Oceana or EJF or some of these other civil society organizations who are really plugged in on the ground to understand who they're working with and where these major fishing countries are, whether they're seafood exporting countries, seafood importing countries, fishing nations, and finding potential partners in civil society on the ground in those places too. Sorry. I was just going to say, we really are seeking out places where we think civil society has an opportunity to make an impact and change policy. So that's sort of the criteria for the places where we're actively recruiting members and seeking to organize them and align their strategies and things like that. It makes total sense. If you think about it, if you think about looking at tackling transparency for fisheries, that's a huge undertaking for a small team. You need the team that's on the ground that understands the local fishery, which helps. And the local people who are involved in the fishery and get that feedback mechanism. But that's still a tall order to take on. How is the organization, how is the coalition sort of organized in terms of gathering the data and then compiling it into reports to give you more of an idea, the coalition, more of an idea of what we're actually seeing and what kind of information we're getting and what patterns we're seeing? So to me, the value of a coalition is in its ability to bring together diverse organizations that have a variety of skills, a variety of areas of focus and expertise and pulling all of these different abilities together to tackle a complex issue. So with that in mind, I would say that's really what we've done. We rely really heavily on the different skill sets that are contained within the member organizations. You know, Oceana, for instance, is not in every single country where we are prioritizing in 2024, neither is WWF, for instance. So we seek to see who the most active people are, understand what the situation is based on their perspective, see who the potential, you know, champions in government or industry are. We focus on government, but some of our partners work more closely with industry. So we're all sort of growing in the same direction is what I'm saying. Yeah, no, absolutely. And was it difficult to bring on some of those smaller civil society groups that were on the ground or was it, did it make sense for them to just be like, yeah, we want to contribute to this coalition and contribute to the information that we can get worldwide? As far as I remember, when we reached out to most organizations, so long as they were aligned with what is contained in the global charter and those 10 policy principles, we didn't really have too much pushback. People were really happy for the support and for the community of practice that hopefully our work brings to them. And do a lot of the different groups follow the global charter? Or was that sort of, was that new to some of them? It was definitely new to some of them. So within the global charter, there's everything from vessel monitoring, which, you know, if you're familiar with Global Fishing Watch, it's something that they really focus on to collecting crew data, which touches back on your human rights question earlier. So some of them have different areas of focus, but they generally are aligned with the really broad definition of what's included in transparency policy. They might just have different sort of policy priorities within their organization. That makes, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now, are you, is it the goal of the coalition to have all this information in like a shareable database to all these coalition or like to the members of the coalition, you know, having information on specific fisheries of species in say Indonesia to, you know, Greenland to all different types of countries? I don't think that we will ever be the arbiters of that data, so to speak, but what we do aim to contribute is knowing who has that data so that if a partner in the Philippines wants to know how Indonesia accomplished, measure X, Y, Z, we know exactly in what direction to point them. Gotcha. So they can contact that affiliation. Exactly. Yeah, we'd love to work with you. Exactly. So it kind of fosters kind of a way that like it is a network where you're fostering collaboration. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. I like that. I like that idea. Bit of a social media site for fisheries transparency. One of the goals that we were originally tasked with was developing a global community of practice so that we could really start to build worldwide momentum towards fisheries transparency because civil society is really powerful and they've accomplished lots of things, but a lot of these victories have been, you know, somewhat isolated by geography. So our funders and our supporters see CFT, the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency, as a vehicle to connect the dots between folks in Panama and folks in Kenya potentially. Yeah, well even even just to put them in contact is a huge feat. There's a group, you're familiar with Rare, a group of Rare. They do a great job at their fishing forever program where they connect tropical countries but more like villages of tropical countries. They're connecting like government officials, mayors and so forth in like in the Philippines to people in Haiti and the Caribbean and it's great to be able to, they get to share information, transfer of information, look at similarities, look at differences in how each one of them have been able to tackle a challenge say in fisheries for this instance and then maybe they can use some of that to apply their own. I think that's a it's probably the same kind of deal with this just a little bit higher level because you're dealing with a lot of a lot of different countries, is that correct? Yeah, right. I mean obviously every country has its own nuances so there is no one-size-all application for fisheries transparency unfortunately for us I think but I think it's just useful in its most basic form for these organizations doing this really hard work to know they're not alone to hear some other ideas. Maybe they tried them, maybe they already have before they worked or they didn't but you know they're not reinventing the wheel and I think that community actually is really valuable on its own without even getting into the deeper benefits. Well I mean if you think about it we globalize everything pretty much. We'll globalize transparency and figuring out how to tackle these challenges right? I think it's great how many countries are currently working with the coalition do you have that off hand by any chance? You know what I just asked somebody on my team. We have organizations working in 62 countries. Wow that's incredible, 62 countries. Now here's this is something that I've always wanted to know you know when a lot of times when we talk about fisheries or overfishing there's always certain countries that are highlighted as being maybe not the best players in town or not tracking you know they've had they've had fishers from that country as sort of you know doing some bad practices and so they get highlighted a lot. It's the same country. I don't really want to mention them because I don't really want to bring them down because I assume the coalition when you go and work with a country that may have been highlighted before as you know not monitoring IU fissuring as well as they could be and stuff. Do you go not as like a finger wagging you're going in as hey we want to help you be as transparent as possible. When you do approach or if you do approach what's the reaction of the country you know of the government that you're working with? Are they a little bit stand off because fisheries can be such a big player in terms of like GDP or is it more of like yes we would love to work with you because we need some help in resource management and so forth. In my experience nine times out of the tenants the latter. I think people are are generally receptive to what we're selling for lack of a better word because I think that they see that it benefits their people and this is something that that their constituents will get behind. But that said it should be noted that we really focus our efforts like I mentioned earlier in places where we think we can have a tangible impact so some of this is already baked into the calculus in some respects where we see an opening with governments. But you know I'll say we've certainly engaged with governments who have maybe received a yellow card or a red card in the past from the European Union and that is not disqualifying for us that's an opportunity. Yeah for sure for sure because there's an opportunity to work with them because yeah look I think what some people don't understand when they read articles like that and I'm glad you brought up the yellow card red card with with the EU because they brought that out a number of years ago it's kind of like a soccer or or a football sort of approach to saying you've done well you haven't done well or you're in the warnings zone. It's very difficult for a government to track IU. Is that not right? Like it's it can't be easy because there's so many different scales of fishing that we see in each country right? Yeah and even another layer to that is that there's lots of different agencies within a singular government who might have some piece of the fishing sector whether it's commerce or the ministry of fisheries or ministry of foreign affairs they all sort of have various touch points and they might have different components of the the full information picture which makes this you know pretty difficult. We saw the same thing in maritime security where within a single country you might not have the Coast Guard talking to the ministry of fisheries and and that's a challenge but it's also just not something that they've ever been faced with before that they might not even know it's a challenge. That's true yeah so with the coalition what are the keys to success in working with a country to get them to be is it to get them to be more transparent is that the goal when you work with the country or you work with organizations like what what is the keys to getting them the more trans like the most transparency out of the of that specific government? So I would say it depends there are certain countries which are in the position of maybe stepping up and taking a global leadership role in transparency and that would be the way that we frame the ask. They've already shown some willingness to embrace transparency policies and we want them to go further. In other settings maybe there's been a considerable amount of investment from our partners in the ground time money whatever and we're looking for the lowest hanging fruit to just get momentum going. Like I said success is success this is a big long fight so we will take what we can get and these are all victories we're celebrating. Right for sure what like when when you approach a country who hasn't maybe had a lot of experience in in this endeavor. I guess like what are those first pieces that would that would be like hey it's successful that you've already took taking this first step you know this is the beginning step. What is that piece? It totally depends I think it depends on on what the government has prioritized to this point. Maybe it's they have been publishing lists of vessels authorized to fish in their waters. That's a great first step. That's a really great first step because so much can can build from that maybe they've already agreed to share their data with Global Fishing Watch. That's an amazing first step too so it really just depends on on what their priorities are and and where the political will is in any given country. Right right do you find it sometimes frustrating when you come up against a country who who resist or do they resist like when they when you try and work with them on certain aspects that would bring them that step closer? I mean sure there's always setbacks in this kind of work and it can be really frustrating but I think our role as the coalition is not so much to focus on that it's to support the folks on the ground who are really in the grind and make sure that they have what they need from a global perspective whether that's just another point of leverage or some communication support or whatever we can offer to make sure that they're sort of staying in the hustle. On the other hand like on the on the other scale you mentioned you had countries who have done you know pretty well and then you want to challenge them a little bit further to you know tackle even more you know that transparency. Where are they at when they when you get to them and they'd be like oh these these guys are pretty far advanced like what have they done like to say hey you know they've done really well like you don't have to name a country but if there's something like an example that you can talk about where there have been pieces where you're like oh wow this country's fairly advanced let's see if we can take them to the next level. So I've been talking a lot about the the global charter which I have a copy of here. So a country that has maybe ticked off six of the ten or something like that of these ten policy principles so what that would look like for us from that point on would be you're so close. You could be one of the first countries in the entire world to be fully aligned with the global charter for fisheries transparency. Doesn't that sound appealing to you and you know I think we get varying levels of receptiveness to that but I think in general countries do want to be leaders but it there is a lot of geopolitics that play too and we certainly understand that it's one of the biggest challenges of this job that you know fish don't carry passports but they sure do you travel. Exactly that's such a great line I love that. Can we you mentioned the ten policies here like ten policy principles can we actually just list them just for the audience if that's okay. Sure. I don't know how long they are on each but it'd be kind of nice to know. No problem. So under vessel information require unique identification numbers for all fishing vessels including transport and supply vessels publish lists of licenses authorizations and sanctions make public the beneficial ownership of vessels and stop the use of flags of convenience by fishing vessels. Under fishing activity make vessel position data public ban or closely monitor at sea trans shipment or the transfer of catch from ship to ship at sea mandate seafood traceability we're looking from boat to plate yes and then in governance and management ratify international agreements that set standards for fishing vessels and trade those include the FAO agreement on port state measures the international labor organization fundamental principles and rights at work Cape Town agreement ensure public and equitable access to fisheries data and participation in fisheries management and decision making and finally collect data on the conditions of fishing vessel crews and publish that data in aggregate form. Interesting these are all like they they are all sounds really great because there's a couple of them where I was like oh yeah that that's a big thing the flag was a big thing obviously but like the first two seemed very simple I'll explain the flag in a little bit or maybe have you explain the flag in a little bit because I think some people don't understand what happens at at sea and you have a lot of experience with that with your maritime security experience as well as as this experience but the first two seem very simple in terms of publishing data and making sure that you know you have the vessel demarcation like the vessel numbers as well as who's allowed to you mentioned it before who's allowed to fish in those waters I think that really helps you know with that transparency because you have a lot of lot of fish fishing vessels that come in from a different country from a foreign country and come in and fish and other countries some countries have handled it in very different ways from sinking boats as extreme as sinking boats to you know not doing anything at all or not even realizing that they're there to putting in specific pillars that would destroy any kind of troll nets to protect the you know local local coral reefs and other habitats can you just talk about the the the the vessel flags and and what that I think is the third priority what that would mean and what it means because some people here may not understand like in the audience may not understand what the vessel means and sure the flags absolutely so every vessel needs to have a flag of a country and it's a bit like having your car with a license plate tagged to Virginia or Colorado say and basically the flag under which your vessel sales you are met to abide by the rules of that country so when we say flags of convenience that's one way of saying that those countries that issue the flags are not necessarily connected to the vessel in some way the vessel is not necessarily from that place the crew is not necessarily from that place we call that a genuine link and when we say flags of convenience sometimes these countries are less inclined to you know enact the rules at sea so this enables things like illegal fishing or human rights and labor abuses on those fishing vessels flying their flags yeah yeah that's great explanation you know that always surprised me when I first learned about that when I was in school and I was just like I can't believe people can switch flags that easily and go to places where they may not have the same rules as another place that may not be a strict you would think with maritime law that would have to be the same but I guess as every country goes by its own sort of a cord right that's the yeah yeah that's exactly right I mean the ocean is a big wide space unfortunately for for enforcement purposes but there are things like there are measures in place which is why all of these principles kind of work in cohesion with one another um later on the international agreements um stipulation that's included in the charter one of the things that that calls for is the port state measures agreement which in theory uh would help to alleviate the the flag switching that you sometimes see yeah yeah it's wonderful the the other thing that stood out one of the policy points was the uh the stopping of transferring at sea and can you explain what that means because this is a big thing when it comes to human right violations yes yes it is absolutely um so transit minute sea is basically a fishing vessel has a fresh catch um which is then transferred while still at sea to a larger transport vessel which brings that catch back to port to be sold and so where the human rights concerns come in is that this allows those fishing vessels to stay at sea for extended periods of time we sometimes see months or years um and oftentimes the crew that are on the vessels are there against their well uh so they don't have access to fresh food or water to medical care to Wi-Fi is a big issue right now in the fishery sector um that people are calling for and um you can imagine the kinds of nefarious things that might happen when people are at sea for for years at a time um so uh that's something that we're looking to uh crack down on um we say ban or closely monitor at sea trans shipment uh sometimes trans shipments are inevitable and and that's certainly understandable um but they need to be logged and monitored to avoid those kinds of human rights and labor abuses yeah absolutely even fisheries observers who have been on those transfer boats have had a lot of problems there was a couple years ago a gentleman who was lost at sea because he kept reporting on on these types of nefarious transfers not only from a human rights impact but even just from identifying being unable to identify fish because they've already been kind of processed let's just say and they couldn't identify the fish who could have been a shark could have been a swordfish we didn't yeah right you couldn't know right so that can be that can be quite difficult so all these all these policies make a lot of sense in terms of bringing us to transparency um now how long is it you've been with director two years what did you were you at the inception of the coalition director i was okay so this has been involved this is two years this is a long process to do um where would you rate the work that you've been able to do uh now compared to when you first started like obviously you've you've hit some pretty you've probably hit some pretty big milestones in terms of the number of countries that are involved number of organizations that are involved but where would do you see like if you look past the past two years how how fast you've progressed and then and then i'll ask like the future as well like where do you see things going in the future my goodness this is a marathon your glass ball yeah exactly this is a marathon and we are maybe on mild too at this point um each few years of mild i like that yeah you know we we've done a lot of work but um it's going to be hard but we've trained for this so yeah we're in it for the whole race absolutely now with that said you know you talk about training you talk about people who are involved in the coalition what are the type like we've got a lot of people who are you know looking for ways to help out with organizations and they've dedicated their careers to working with on the conservation side not just on the science side but on the conservation side what are the types of uh i guess titles of people like of jobs that people work for the coalition um so we have a couple of different sort of characterizations of partners um so the coalition has a secretariat of three staff and and some additional support so it is myself a communication staff person and a membership engagement uh an outreach person um so that is the the nuclear nuclear family of the coalition secretariat um but we have tremendous support from our co-chair organizations which include oceana um in the environmental justice foundation who each provides staff time uh on a really regular basis so basically a full-time staff person from each of them as well who help organize with their offices on the ground um so this is a lot of transparency policy manager um communication staff those kinds of folks um and then we have uh even support from oceana's chief scientist and the t-o-o at ejf um so it's it's a really broad range of folks um in terms of our member organizations i would say that most um most frequent title that we see is policy officer or some derivation of that uh there are a lot of lawyers in the mix uh which is quite useful in terms of understanding what the legal environment is in these places and and what the opportunities are to actually move laws ahead um so that's that's always an incredible asset uh to have those folks on our side as well um and then there's a lot of conservation biologists and marine biologists like yourself and scientific communicators which are all essential pieces of this puzzle too amazing amazing uh this has been uh wonderful uh i i assume if people want more information they can go to the website fisheries transparency.net i'll link to in the show note you do have a twitter profile as well fish coalition um and so we'll put that as well uh and and like what in the next year or so uh what kind of projects are you as the coalition focusing on over the next year are there new countries that are going to be coming on board or or what is the priority for the next year um so we are looking at a couple countries in africa and asia uh where we are hoping to advance specific transparency policies um we're also looking to take advantage of the upcoming our ocean conference in april uh where what we'd really like to see is the profile of transparency raised in a way that we haven't seen yet um i understand that this can be kind of an obtuse concept and we're trying to to combat that too um so that people understand that this is a tool um and it's an accessible tool uh which is to everybody's benefit um so that is one of our our major lifts for 2025 as well um and uh you know i i we are always open to opportunities as they emerge too so um reticent to say that we have a concrete plan at this point because oftentimes these emerge as we go and especially like you know as a network does conversations happen you get introduced to different people who are in the game and you're able to either grow the network from an organization like from bring on more organizations um civil society groups or even by countries and and obviously this is a growing uh work and it's a it's complex and and you know not an easy undertaking and i just want to thank you for not only coming on the podcast and letting us know about this but also to do the work that you do and and and manage it from you know such a like a large scope with a you know you do have us uh you have a a good nuclear family but it is a small nuclear family that does a lot and and we appreciate all the work that you do um and we'd love to have you or some of your your partners on to talk more about some of the projects that are that have gone on in the last two years or that are upcoming and you want to share feel free to reach out because we'd love to have you on to get the word out there and and get this audience knowing because we they all that wasn't good thing about this either they like to speak up as well so they're going to talk about it as well so uh that's fantastic well thank you so much for having me this is super fun you bet thank you thank you mazie for joining us on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast was great to have you on i'm looking forward to being able to talk about more projects that the coalition is putting together we're working on and some of the results that have come out of the coalition in the future mazie and i were talking after and she's like hey we can put you in touch with some great players that we have that we'll be able to talk about a lot of interesting projects that we have and so today is just sort of the kickoff of this overview of the coalition of fisheries transparency being able to get the whole purpose of it and why it's so important and then we're going to dive in deep into some of the the other players that are that are working on the ground with specific fisheries in specific countries and we're going to see the challenges they face the successes that they've had through those challenges and also maybe some of them not so successful so we're going to talk about that because it's all about transparency and i think that's really important um so i hope you enjoyed this episode as much as i did recording and doing the interview for mazie was fantastic so again thank you to mazie but do you have questions around fisheries transparency i u u fishing or anything that has to do with overfishing whether it be on the high seas or coastal area or within the easy the exclusive economic zone of each country i would love to hear it from you all you can just put a comment on uh on the spotify if you're watching this on spotify or listening through spotify or on youtube uh or you can hit me up on instagram at how to protect the ocean that's at how to protect the ocean and of course if you enjoyed this video and you're watching this or you're listening to this please subscribe hit that notification bell on whatever platform you're watching or listening to this because it's really important that we spread the word that we have regular information about the ocean coming to us like i said this is a resource that i didn't have when i was a kid we didn't even have internet when i was a kid that's how old i am i had to go to the library which is great but a lot of the books that i had in ontario and toronto did not have a lot of information on uh on on on sharks or on fisheries or on the ocean just in general other than large beautiful photographs didn't have a lot of information the encyclopedias can only take me so far but now with the internet now with all the information that's out there i'm trying to bring it together so that you can have it for yourself and you can stay informed and you can make better decisions around the oceans that you can live for a better ocean so stay tuned subscribe follow hit the notification bell whatever you have to do so that you can get more information and use this as a resource for you to help protect the ocean so thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast i'm your host angelouin have a great day we'll talk to you next time and happy conservation
