For decades, the owners of refrigerated container ships, or reefers, often associated with illegal fishing, have remained in the shadows. Now, a new study has traced 324 companies as the owners of 569 reefer vessels active between 2017 and 2022, identifying the people and countries behind these ships for the first time.
Reefers are used as floating storage for fishing fleets across the world’s high seas. These ships stay out at sea for several months, allowing catches to be off-loaded far from ports. The setup cuts fuel use by keeping fishing boats out longer, but experts warn it also enables the fishing industry to sidestep regulations, with reports linking reefers to not only illegal fishing but also severe human rights abuses, including forced labor.
“A vessel is just a piece of steel,” the study’s lead author Frida Bengtsson, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, told Mongabay by phone. “These are companies and people making decisions. Knowing who owns the ships is a starting point for addressing concerns.”
Bengtsson’s research found that almost half of the vessels are owned by companies based in Russia (26%) and China (20%), while other major owners are in Greece, Japan and South Korea.
The study also found that many of these companies registered their vessels in countries other than their own and operated under foreign flags, called flags of convenience. For example, of the 48 Greek-owned reefers the researchers examined, none flew Greece flags. Instead, 33 were flagged to Panama, six to Russia and three to Liberia. Both Panama and Liberia are known for looser regulations, enabling companies to sidestep stricter rules in their home countries.
Reefers also move large amounts of fish between ships at sea, called transshipment, which can mix legal and illegal catches and obscure their origins. Roughly a third of all tuna is transshipped at least once before reaching shore, making traceability harder, Jamie Gibbon, senior officer for U.S. think tank Pew Charitable Trusts, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay.
“This is a global industry with a complex system to oversee,” Gibbon said. “You might have a reefer vessel owned by a company in one country, flying the flag of a different country, meeting with a fishing vessel from yet another country, then potentially off-loading in a fourth. That’s why there are large challenges with transparency and oversight.”
While not all reefers engage in illegal conduct, without transparency, oversight is difficult. Linking ships back to their owners is a step toward identifying bad actors.
“My hope is that people involved in this industry and those regulating it can use this data as a starting point,” Bengtsson said. “There are always people that want to do good and follow the rules. If we can engage in a conversation, these companies are a missing piece.”
Banner image: A Taiwanese longliner transfers frozen tuna to a Japanese reefer in the Atlantic Ocean. Image © Tommy Trenchard/Greenpeace.
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