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[seagulls keowing]
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[faint breeze]
[waves crashing]
[water splashing and bubbles]
Marked by grief,
excruciating pain,
following the sudden loss of Samuel Abayateye.
[helicopter blades churning]
The 38 year old’s body was found in Ada
after he went missing aboard a tuna vessel,
Marine 707,
stationed at the Tema Harbor.
[boat motors rumbling]
I found a body without head, without arms, without legs.
Is that him?
We don't know.
The Fisheries Commission are not telling anybody
anything about it.
There is nothing about the disappearance
of these observers.
So, do we sit on the fence
for more observers to go missing?
It defies belief that so many observers
slip and fall into the sea.
[waves crashing]
And these are not just one-off cases.
They are happening over and over and over again.
It is chaos on the high seas.
The same people
who are murdering observers and making them disappear
are the people killing the ocean.
[Main Title music]
[faint underwater bubbles]
[underwater bubbles]
[atmospheric electronic score]
Well, observers go out on commercial fishing vessels
right alongside of the fishermen.
Their role is to document illegal fishing practices.
The observer is the witness to what's going on out there.
They're the ones helping us understand
if our oceans are healthy.
How pollution or overfishing are harming marine life.
Some of the data on plastics pollution
comes from observers.
Observers are not part of the crew, but
it almost feels like you are because you're
sleeping in the same bunk rooms,
you're eating the same food,
you're working the same hours. You're out on the deck
in your foul weather gear like all the other fishermen.
You're out there with everybody else. You're in it.
It's difficult to get observers to speak.
If it is known that they talked to a journalist,
then they can be fired on the spot.
A lot of the observers will do this as a job
right out of college for a couple of years,
you know, and then go on to a career
in a lab or an office somewhere.
But, some of these people like, they get the bug, right?
And, you know, working in an office is always
going to seem a little tepid.
And so they keep going back out.
The song, I like to play,
originally wrote it out at sea here,
it’s called up with the sun.
[ukulele strumming]
Some say he’s lost.
Maybe he's been found.
He listened on the breeze.
Keith found a life that he really loved,
that allowed him to...
to travel the world.
He was this marine biologist,
an idealist drawn to the romance of the high seas.
He wanted to make a difference
and help conserve the oceans.
[tense music]
Well, Keith Davis, I'm doing a comparison of marlin here.
This is a...
a blue marlin here.
This observer job became Keith's whole life.
For everyone that goes down to this sea...
Returns back to the sea.
And then... Keith went missing.
[typing on keyboard]
I'm a reporter based in the dusty high
desert of West Texas. Eight hours from any ocean.
I've written about crime and fires and motorcycles,
and I've learned that when you dig into a story,
you can find yourself in some pretty unexpected places.
[ocean waves]
I think when you’re an observer,
you get to see things
that most of the world will never get to see.
You get to travel to places
that most people will never get to travel to.
I heard observers talk about being on a ship
that far out to sea, and it's incredibly still.
The stars are reflected in the stillness of the ocean,
just sort of in this, like, never ending swirl of stars.
Just these encounters with whales
and with marine life up close and personal.
I think all of that is really entrancing.
And for a certain person like Keith,
you know, you get addicted to it.
Oh yeah, he loved to play his music,
and play the Grateful Dead. Dance.
He never wore shoes.
He was such a little hippie.
And then he disappeared.
[waves crashing] [tense music]
Out at sea here,
on a Transshipment vessel.
The last boat that Keith was on
that we know of, was the Victoria 168.
It was part of a tuna fishing fleet
operating out of Panama.
The transshipment vessels are essentially
a refrigerated cargo vessel
decked out with freezers that freeze to -60.
And that's the preserved sashimi grade fish.
And then towards the back of the vessel,
you have the supplies that are going
to get transferred onto the fishing vessels.
You know, it gives them the fuel,
gives them the bait, gives them the food,
so that they can stay long enough for up to a year.
And I think, the longest I've heard of, is a vessel
staying continuously at sea for ten years.
The transshipment thing did kind of blow my mind in a way.
Just the idea of being at sea for years,
Without coming in to shore.
Transshipment is how we have cheap fish.
You don't have boats, you know,
going back and forth to port, which takes time.
It takes money. There's an environmental cost to that.
We have this brutally efficient system,
often without any communication,
without any oversight.
And horrific abuses can exist out there
because nobody's really watching.
Seems to be an oil slick.
I’m not sure where, where it’s originating.
That video of Keith
is the last known recording of his voice
days after he filmed it,
He disappeared.
There's an email from the ship
addressed to Keith's employer, and it includes
a timeline of what happened the day before.
They commenced the transfer work at 0835 that morning,
and lunch is served at 1130.
But then at 1450, there's a note saying that
Keith was seen going back to his cabin.
One hour and 15 minutes later,
when the fish transfer is complete
and the chief officer needs a signature from Keith,
he can't be found.
An entry 15 minutes later says
all vessels search again and again could not be found.
According to this email,
the search on board continues until 2225 that evening.
Then at 2230,
they contact the Peruvian Coast Guard
but receive no answer.
The searches didn't turn up anything.
If Keith was alive when he went overboard,
he could have survived for a day, maybe two.
[waves crashing]
Ten days later, the Victoria 168,
arrived back in Panama.
[canal locks churning]
I wanted to know more about
what might have happened on board the Victoria 168.
So I spoke to Keith Davis’ friend, Bubba Cook.
You know how in a crisis
there's always one person who's like the hub,
connecting everyone and relaying all the information?
Well, here it was, Bubba.
You know, he had reported seeing what he thought was,
you know, the transfer of a blue fin tuna
from a long, long line vessel
that wasn't licensed to to catch blue fin tuna.
There was also a report that he had thought
he had seen trunks that were transferred
that appeared to be great white sharks,
which is a prohibited species.
Could Keith have witnessed some kind of smuggling?
Is it possible that he walked in on something
he wasn't meant to see?
[brooding music)
I also know that he sent a
communication to his father, and in the days prior
that he was concerned
about his situation on board the vessel.
And he felt concerned enough to feel somewhat threatened.
Then he went missing just a few days later.
Who killed Keith Davis?
How do you even begin
to investigate when someone disappears at sea?
[fog horn blaring]
[auctioneer on megaphone]
There are these dark forces within the fishing industry.
I'm an investigator.
I've been working on the global tuna campaign
for the last two and a half years.
Observers have gone missing
in circumstances that look suspicious.
And our concern is that they're,
that they're murder.
And like any homicide or murder investigation,
you need to look at motive.
Some would say elements of the fishing industry
are organized crime in and of their own right.
These vessels are a long way from anywhere important,
with complete freedom and nobody watching.
[tense music]
Over the years, we have seen seizures of arms,
money laundering, drugs smuggled on fishing vessels.
[industrial ambiance]
Hey.
It is so nice to finally meet you.
My role was to try and gather evidence
and work with our team to try and establish
exactly where the issues might be.
So I was an observer,
started in 1983 to 2008 on and off.
What's the worst experience you personally suffered?
[brooding music]
I was threatened with being thrown overboard.
Who was making those threats?
The captain.
I basically hid in my room for a few days.
I mean, I came out for meals,
but I didn't really feel safe.
What we're looking at now is this investigation to begin
looking at these deaths.
- Yes. - At sea.
What is your role?
It all started with my,
one of my colleagues, Keith Davis, disappearing.
Liz is an incredible person.
And she's often the first point of contact
when there is some sort of observer tragedy,
disappearance, disaster.
People will reach out to her
through the Association for Professionals Observers.
She's the point person.
Nobody
really knows about what's going on out there
and what, what it takes to get fish to your plate.
My primary reason
for coming to Spain
was to find out more information, if I can,
about the circumstances involved in the death of,
James Junior Numbaru.
But also these other observers who have died.
We've had a lot of them die in the last couple of years.
James, who was the fourth observer
from PNG to disappear.
All suspicious cases.
[tense music]
It is my understanding that up until July last year
for Papua New Guineans were lost at sea
without a trace and usually around 2AM
in the morning.
What is the PNG government doing to protect our young men
on the front lines doing this job?
Charlie Lasisi was an observer
serving on board a Chinese vessel
that had a Filipino crew on it.
There's very little question that Charlie was murdered.
His body was found bound.
There were charges that were brought,
and those Filipino crew members
were indicted but ultimately released.
Usaia Masibalavu is a Fijian observer.
Wesley Talia died on board a vessel and didn't have to.
Larry Gavin was another example
of a tragedy in which an observer was murdered
in the course of doing his job.
[brooding music]
That's tragic and that shouldn't happen.
[traffic ambiance]
None of those agencies, none of those governments
have been transparent
about the circumstances of any of these observers.
Tell us what it is you're going to show us, Liz.
All right. So, we've got,
a film from the CCTV footage
on the vessel that was used as evidence.
James was a shy person.
He was a gentle person.
Three days after he was on board, he went missing.
I think we should look at the,
the one in the hallway first.
Okay.
We see James struggles to get up.
[groans]
I think the room is right there.
Knocks on the cabin.
You think that he'd wake up and check it out?
He's very clearly impaired.
Impaired, yeah.
And then another crewman emerging in that same hallway,
following him.
Seconds later,
he takes off his clothes.
He's in pretty bad shape.
Bad shape. Yeah.
And then he goes, look, he's talking to someone.
He’s arguing. He's covering his genitals.
You know, why would he cover his genitals if he was alone?
The skiff is in the water.
And they said that they were sleeping.
They don't leave their skiff in the water.
It's brought up when they're not using it.
[groans]
It's harrowing.
And it's, it's, that's hard to watch.
He's in the middle of the ocean and
him going over the side was disgraceful.
That, that this has happened.
What is your feeling about what happened?
I feel that he was drugged
and that he was coerced into taking off his clothes
and going overboard.
We used to always joke about it.
And say God, they could just throw you overboard. But,
we never really
believed that
anybody would do that.
[tense score]
You're in a vulnerable situation.
You're isolated.
As a matter of survival, you try to get along
and then they invite you to drink,
and next thing you know, you're being drugged.
Drugging is definitely a danger for observers.
So much can go wrong if you let down your guard.
I've heard of observers
getting chased down the dock with a butcher knife.
Men getting groped.
There was an attempted rape. An observer getting drugged,
forcing an observer to jump overboard and swim
until the captain wants to take them back.
There's really nothing you can do.
You have to tough it out and do the best you can.
Observers sign these nondisclosure agreements
that forbid them to share data with anybody.
It's meant to shield the companies.
This has happened again and again with observers
who've disappeared.
They've just, there's no consequence.
So the investigation is not complete.
You know what happened at sea stays at sea.
You know, the oceans are vast, and the assumption
is that you can get away with anything.
You know, if there's no body, there's no crime.
This vessel, it's a crime scene.
We can see what happened to James.
That's clear. It's on camera.
And it's not often when something like this happens,
you can see it on film.
[tense score]
I’ve been involved in investigating
fisheries related issues for a few years now.
Roadblocks appear to be put up everywhere,
and there's a real lack of transparency.
Secrecy is king in the fishing industry.
Who's got what to hide and why?
[radio announcer]
We're going to visit Oswaldo Alaniz
who was the FBI agent
at the time of Keith Davis' disappearance.
He's so terse.
I was like, I look forward to seeing you soon.
We're, we’re heading over there.
And he said, okay.
If he was somebody I was dating,
I would think that he was about to break up with me.
But, you know, maybe he's just an FBI agent.
He's just efficient.
He's retired from the FBI
so I had to kind of track him down in the civilian world.
I was pleasantly surprised that he agreed to talk
because as far as I know, he hasn't
he hasn't talked about this publicly at all.
So he's just,
you know, much closer to this case
than pretty much anybody else
I've been able to speak with so far. So...
- Hello. - Hi!
- Rachel? - Yes!
- Ozzie. - Pleasure to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
Do you remember where and when you first heard
that an American had gone missing offshore?
So, I remember that day.
We were notified that there was an American missing.
That there was a ship coming in to Vacamonte.
And that if we could meet the ship.
What was key there was it was a Panamanian flag ship.
So, that was going to be a little bit of a hurdle,
how we were going to, you know, work and address it.
What do you... what do you mean by that?
Well, because it was a Panamanian flag,
they ultimately had jurisdiction on that.
So we were not allowed to do any interviews.
We were not allowed to do
any investigation of the crime scene.
We did board the ship.
We were allowed to participate, but they led it.
You realize once you start writing about crime,
like jurisdiction is so key.
Who has jurisdiction is such a fundamental part
of whether a crime gets solved or not.
And I imagine, you know, you're facing
some serious investigative challenges
when you have a crime scene that's
on a boat and the boat is
hundreds of miles offshore, and then it's like,
I think it was ten days for it to come back in.
And the crime scene was very concerning
because the longer you wait,
evidence has a way to degrade
and there's time for people to clean it up.
Yeah. You're like waiting for the crime scene to come to you.
Yes.
Would forensics have been useful even ten days afterwards?
- Sure. - Really? What could you have...
We would have looked for blood splatters.
I think in his room or around the doorway.
There could have been a lot of tests
or examinations that could have been done.
That at least would have been helpful
in trying to help identify what had happened.
We had no reports of a body being recovered.
Or a body hadn't washed ashore.
The parties that were involved,
the ships
there was no interest by them to provide
any more information regarding Keith.
Again, this whole case has been,
from the time that I ran with it,
was very, very frustrating. - Yeah.
I think there was some foul play.
From what I had read in his journal,
he had made some comments that,
that were a little bit concerning, but he didn't...
he wanted to wait until he was on land to speak about them.
There were some things that he wanted to bring light to,
regarding maybe what he observed,
that I think he was going to make that known.
When I think of Keith's position,
I think of how it makes you so vulnerable.
You put a person on a boat,
and that person is supposed
to be observing and reporting back,
but you're living with the people that you're reporting on.
There's nowhere to escape.
There's nowhere to get help.
Observers sometimes don't have a secure way to communicate
with authorities on shore.
We know that Keith could only send emails
through the captain's equipment,
so nothing private could be transmitted.
It's no wonder that observers often stay silent.
He saw something.
Arms trafficking, human trafficking.
There's a lot of things that happen out there.
The ship did have frozen fish in the bottom
that they had to unload.
Maybe he saw them over fish,
or maybe they were fishing for a species
that they weren't supposed to be fishing.
That could have been something
that he could have reported, and that would have gotten
either of those ships probably in trouble.
Perhaps a crew member decided to
throw him overboard. [underwater bubbles]
The railing was pretty high all around the ship.
So you're just not going to just lean over and fall.
You have to forcefully push yourself over.
- Or be pushed over. - Or be pushed over.
[dock worker ambiance] [brooding score]
[truck beeping]
[wind flapping]
[conveyor thud]
I think it's a Chinese government owned vessel.
There's about 1400 pieces of yellow fin.
And on this side is Albacore.
And there's about 4000 pieces.
This is what they would consider as a typical catch.
Tuna. It's the oil of the Pacific.
It basically drives
our lifeline for most Pacific island countries.
This is our shared resource.
The Pacific has the last
remaining healthiest tuna fishery, and it's declining.
And with the recent cases of
observers dying, the human cost of what?
The can of tuna that we're eating
and the sushi and sashimi that we’re eating?
Like, is it worth it?
I am from Fiji.
I've spent most of my career seeing firsthand
the corruption.
This is a multibillion dollar industry,
and they would do anything to retain
the open access that they are so used to.
We want to eradicate illegal fishing
and that requires us to potentially go on board
and to look through their paperwork.
Don't go anywhere until we've spoken
to the captain on the bridge.
[dramatic music]
Dung 1212. Dung 1212.
This is Greenpeace. Do you copy?
The ocean is a huge part of our tradition.
My grandfather, even my father,
were always reminding me
about the importance of only catching enough.
But other fishing countries are basically
trying to take as much fish as they possibly can.
With observers within their roles
and responsibilities on board,
they bear the truth
of the actual industry's face,
the reality of their business model,
and what they have been hiding from us.
This is a threat to their maintaining
the multibillion dollar nature of the industry
and their profit margin.
And because of that, dozens
and dozens of Pacific Island observers have died.
We can't just
let this go by that it's unrecorded or unreported.
No one knows what's going on.
[atmospheric music]
This is our Pacific Ocean.
It gives us all the riches.
It gives us our future.
Sometimes I wish
it can talk.
It can just tell us what has happened in there.
Out there. See?
We can't see beyond the horizon,
but even beyond the horizon. There’s...
The sea wouldn't talk.
The ocean wouldn't talk.
Did they say where he died?
They said that he died in Nauru waters.
They called him a true, true observer.
Oh... They said that he died on the 4th of March.
His journal stopped, recording on the 27th of February.
If he wasn't recording his log between the 28th
and the 4th of March,
I do not believe that he died on the fourth.
Like a lot of young men from Kiribas,
Eritara was drawn to maritime life.
He took a job as a naval seaman with a German company.
But when he got married, he wanted to spend
less time at sea and be closer to his family.
That's when he heard about the observer program.
He was hardworking, very honest.
He was ambitious.
[tense music]
Sometimes Eritara witnessed things on board that the crew
and the captain would rather he hadn't seen.
He told Nikora that on one trip
the crew tried to bribe him
to overlook illegal shark finning,
and he refused to take the bribe.
That was very uncomfortable for him, very unsafe for him.
He actually didn't
eat after that from the kitchen or from the mess room.
He was feeding on his own noodles and biscuits
because he had, he actually had fear
following that incident.
He was very, very worried.
Eritara was concerned.
Was he getting a reputation as a snitch?
He was the
the provider for the family and
and that's what
made him go back to sea.
What happened?
He failed to turn up for dinner.
And when the crew or some people on the ship
went to check. Yeah, they found his... door locked.
And when they opened it, they found him on the floor...
dead.
The report of the top forensic pathologist for Fiji:
The cause of death was blunt force trauma.
There is a standing court ruling basically saying
vessel, you're not allowed to go out fishing.
Stay until the investigation is done.
That’s right.
Seven and a half months later,
this company hired a pathologist in New Zealand.
Cause of death was changed from trauma to hypertension.
[atmospheric music]
Whatever transpired,
the police commissioner in the Attorney General’s office
released the vessel.
Yes.
I've never seen anything where you would have multiple
pathology reports
with such drastically different conclusions.
These companies are under great pressure
to have as many vessels fishing as much as possible,
because that's, that's their business, right?
And they can't afford to have a boat
sitting at the dock being,
you know, part of an investigation.
And so I imagine
there is a desire within the company
to get that boat fishing again.
Are they just numbers because they're making
a lot of money from, tuna or from fishing?
It's okay that 1 or 2 or 3 or 20 or 30 or 40 died?
I mean, oh God.
It's totally not right.
It's just not...
It's, it's, it's a disgrace
on the Pacific Islanders.
I am well aware of the,
level of corruption in this industry.
And it's the families that
needs the justice that this deserves.
[rhythmic vibrant score]
I wanted to hear about Keith Davis’ last days
on board the Victoria 168,
and the investigation into his death.
Because it was flying a Panamanian flag
that the Panamanians had ultimate authority here,
and they requested to have control over the case.
And so they got to be in charge.
César Petti was the lead investigator on this case.
He was the one who was there on the ground.
When did you first hear that an observer had gone missing?
In September the 17th,
the authorities got called about a guy missing on a ship.
On September the 20th, the vessel arrives
at a port in Panama, Vacamonte.
And the authorities conducted interviews with the whole crew.
One of the vessels that the Victoria 168
met up with, had just come from Port,
and so that broke the pattern
of what you would normally expect.
Were you aware
of this unusual behavior by the Chung Kuo 818
and was that investigated at all?
About the Chung Kuo vessel,
we don't have that much information.
We know that they were doing the transshipping
with the Victoria when Mr. Davis went missing.
It is quite anomalous
for one of these long liners to go to port at all,
which his boat had done,
just days before Keith disappeared.
We what we know from Keith's notes is that,
at least the official explanation was, that
they had a sick crew member, so they had to rush to port to
get this guy to the hospital.
Some people have theorized that maybe Keith,
saw something that he shouldn't have seen.
Maybe there was some instance of drug trafficking.
Arms trafficking, human trafficking,
all sorts of things we know happen out at sea.
Overseas, are very, very plagued
with drug trafficking and
and situations that maybe are not usual
on the Panamanian coasts, but probably are
are usual in other, in other countries.
He didn't just trip and fall overboard.
To me, there's no question that he was murdered.
When you look at the totality of the circumstances,
the fact that he had 16 years as an observer.
He wrote the book on observer safety and security.
Keith helped pass the observer bill of rights,
which was this big bill that occurred
at the International Fisheries
and Observer Monitoring Conference.
[tense music]
At this conference, Keith shows a video of a long liner
that had a capacity of like 20 people
and it had 65 people just packed in there,
super crowded, super dangerous.
Keith was obviously horrified by this and displayed it.
If observers get outed
as a snitch, that means that they're even further at risk.
It wasn't safe for him.
He felt menaced.
And then two years later, he went back out and
and then he died.
[waves crashing] [tense music]
You have somebody
in a situation where we know crime is rampant.
He had witnessed human rights abuses,
environmental abuses before he disappeared.
We know that Keith was a person who was not
likely to see something wrong and then be quiet about it.
He was a person who spoke out,
you know, sometimes to his own detriment.
It was more important to them to hide
whatever activity they were involved in
onboard that vessel and kill a human being.
Than... you know, it...
There's just no justice in it.
When it happened to him, I remember sitting at my desk.
And my colleague was sitting across from me.
And I said,
"God, I hope they killed him before
they threw him overboard."
Because I couldn't think of anything worse than
being set adrift at sea and watching the vessel pull away,
knowing that you're going to die.
[underwater bubbling]
[electronic music sting]
[Zoom call jingle]
Awesome.
Right?
So we're going. So Lagi, go ahead.
I'm in desperate need of,
having another eye on a lot of this.
Yeah, there's quite a lot of unanswered questions.
We have been struggling for quite a long time
in getting access to official documentation.
Some things are not adding up.
There are obviously
gray areas around the official logbook from Eritara.
He had noted that
there was 14 metric tonnes of tuna
that he deemed was disqualified.
The engagement of the second pathologist.
What do we know about that? How did that come about?
This was facilitated by the company lawyer... in Kiribas.
So this would have to be
this would have been a pathologist
that would be in the interest of the company.
You know, I've also gotten to the point
that I've got my own
conspiracy theory around this,
but I really want to be able to be guided by facts.
There's enough information that seems
for us to draw some better conclusions, firmer
conclusions for the family than what we have now.
Just make sure that I...
One of the Kiribas fisheries observers,
had died at sea during that period,
and they were transporting it to Tarawa.
So we're trying to find out just the last reporting.
So it stopped reporting on the...
- On the 1st of March. - 1st of March, huh?
So even the 31st, it still wasn't reporting.
Yes.
- So - There's a missing link here.
They were not reporting. - Between?
From the Marshall’s to Nauru,
and then they pick up again in the high seas
pocket here.
I have checked with the track of the vessel.
We can establish that it was in the high seas
between 27th, 28th.
It would have gone to Nauru borders.
We know that there was no reporting during that time.
It was recently revealed
that 75% of fishing vessels are running dark.
Either they're fishing where they shouldn't be
or they have something to hide.
VMS is switched off.
There's dark areas for the vessel.
There's gaps in the evidence. There’s...
inconsistency in time of death.
So in those circumstances,
you absolutely want to be able to look at all the material
in a lot of detail, rather than just
accept at face value.
Is he still shooting?
[atmospheric music]
[fog horn blaring]
I'm a very spiritual person.
Because of the pain and the trauma
that this case involves,
I allow myself to apply the
emotions that is required.
Whatever I do needs to be thoughtful.
[atmospheric music]
The system needs to be questioned.
I feel I'm mentally prepared.
I'll do my best
to stay on point.
I'm tired, but I'm ready.
I know deep inside of me that I will get some answers.
Bula, Doctor Patricia.
I'm meeting with Doctor Patricia
to find the connection between
what's happening in the political world
with what's actually happening at sea.
[laughing]
Nice to see you.
Bula, nice to see you.
Come on in. Thank you.
James Junior Numbaru, observer, fell or jumped overboard,
on the Feng Xiang 818 east of Nauru.
Chinese flagged.
Fell or jumped overboard. Who knows?
Filipino fell overboard.
Fell overboard.
How do you know they fell overboard?
That might have been hit on the head.
Drowning, pneumonia, murder.
I think safety and security is starting
to become the big question that we're needing
to uncover now. Like, what about the crew on board?
What about these observers?
How, how, who is responsible for their safety and security?
The ones who decided to have observers was the Commission.
So it's like in a big company,
the buck stops at the top.
What really disturbs me when you talk to the men,
you hear all sorts of things.
We've had people telling us about shark finning
and about a man the captain didn't like,
and he was beaten.
The man ended up dying
and they washed his body and put him in the freezer.
We hear all of those stories.
Observers are supposed to keep the bastards honest.
You know, Bubba Cook is... You know Bubba very well.
His position is that if any observer dies,
the vessel should be banned from fishing
for 2 or 3 months.
Just like that. But no, nothing happens.
Just makes me really mad.
No one wants to do anything.
Why do you think that's allowed to happen?
The thing that’s stopping,
in my view, that's stopping a lot of these questions asking
is because of the access fees.
These companies pay access fees to
all the countries in the Pacific,
to Fiji, to Tuvalu, Samoa.
All these countries in the Pacific
and many of them, that is what makes up 50 percent
or more of their, their budget
is the access fees that come from these countries.
So if you were gonna squeal about it,
that's their fear,
that the vessels are gonna say, well stuff you.
We're not gonna fish in your waters any more.
[brooding score]
[car horn]
We're starting to uncover the...
the dark side of this business.
We need to start asking hard questions now.
Doctor Manu, explain to us what exactly the FFA does.
FFA is an advisory body to 17 member countries
to provide advice
on the management and development
of our valuable tuna resources.
The tuna industry, the access fees
that we generate from this resource,
it provides over 460 million USD a year.
[brooding score]
Over 50 percent of the world's tuna
comes from the western central Pacific Ocean.
The Pacific is the only region
in the world where all four major
tuna stocks are biologically healthy.
And that's not a responsibility that we take lightly.
[industrial ambiance]
The mass market for cheap tuna, that is mainly skipjack,
it's a fish that is supposed
to not be overfished, but it is overfished.
The biggest change in the ocean happened
40 years ago.
The massive industrialization
of fishing throughout the world.
We are chasing the last remnants of the big fish.
There's one side of the camp that says everything's
okay with the tuna fisheries.
And there's the other side of the camp that says
there's absolutely something wrong.
[conveyor belt hum]
[atmospheric music]
You know, the whole notion of a canned tuna
and the commodification of a wild product,
that might be the problem.
Every year
we take 80 to 90 million metric tonnes out of the ocean.
That's the equivalent of the human weight of China.
The tuna are so valuable.
But when you catch tuna,
you catch the productivity of a huge swath of the ocean.
It's the lion, the tiger of the sea.
It doesn't make sense to have that be
something that's cheap for mass consumption.
Once you have canneries, supply chains,
it’s very hard to dial that back.
So all of the elements are in place for a collapse.
We should close the high seas to all fishing.
[waves crashing]
[gentle music]
The stock would recover,
and if they recovered,
they would also migrate where they could be caught.
You would have no loss of catch.
You may catch even more.
So that would bring equity to the wealth of the ocean.
There's been a number of
recent cases of observers that have died at sea.
And part of the work that we've been doing
is trying to
investigate further what
what happens in these sorts of incidents.
Observer safety and welfare
is a top priority for our membership.
Though the death of observers,
it's something that tells us
that we still have a lot of work to do.
And I think that
the FFA membership are united in ensuring that.
So we have,
a high number of observers that we employ, over 100.
How do we ensure their safety?
What are some of the measures
and provisions that you have?
We have a good system here
where every observer is brought in.
They go through rigorous training and,
the conditions are discussed with them, with the company.
[brooding music]
Observers are the most vulnerable people
out on these boats.
They're, they're being abused. They're being killed.
[bubbling]
We've seen observers as human rights defenders,
as they're defined by the UN.
They deserve
to have heightened protection by the UN system.
And they're there to make sure that our human right
to a healthy environment is respected.
Tuna is known to be produced with forced labor,
off of death of observers.
[atmospheric music] [wind blowing]
At the end of the day, what these companies want is money.
They don't care at what cost they achieve the profits.
Even at the cost of human lives.
The seafood industry,
the fishing industry promised to self-regulate.
The RFMO’s and industry are very close.
There are some very powerful
players and interests at the RFMO’s
that are blocking proposals on observer protection.
They are wholly unfit for the purpose of conservation.
[atmospheric music]
All of us in Ghana, for generations upon generations,
we depend on the sea.
But I'm afraid that in days, weeks, months, years to come.
There may be no fish in the sea.
For our coastal communities, there is no alternative
means of livelihood that will satisfy them.
So if you take that one out, they have virtually nothing.
Their hopes and aspirations are tied to the ocean,
and we need to protect
the valuable resource that we do have.
Emmanuel Essien
an employee of the Fisheries Commission, was assigned
aboard a Chinese vessel on the 5th of July, 2019.
The Meng Xin 15 had set sail
for operations, but at about 7PM
on that fateful day, crew members detected
that Essien was not on board, forcing the crew
to suspend fishing operations in search of him.
In the case of Essien, the report that he did,
that this vessel ought to be investigated by the police,
and then the next trip he goes missing.
Some say Emmanuel Essien was targeted
for a report he filed
to the Ghana Police.
He claimed he had witnessed dumping
from the Chinese vessel he worked on, the week before.
The report was ignored
and the Ghana Police claimed the photos and videos
he provided as evidence were lost.
I don’t know what actually happened to him.
The rumors that we’ve heard is that
he saw something which was not good
and he complained.
They say he is missing.
But I think a human being cannot just
disappear from a vessel like that.
What came to my mind is that they
had thrown my colleague into the sea.
Essien was, like a pain in the neck.
And then the last report that was done,
"Hey, this vessel that I was in
perpetrated a series of illegalities.
So we need to ask the official
that when that report was given to them,
what did they do about them?"
I am struggling to find out why nobody is being sanctioned
for the disappearance of this guy.
One life lost is a huge big deal.
[gentle score]
[urban ambience]
She does not know whether the son is dead or not.
So the funeral cannot be held now.
Because he only told me that he was going to work.
He never came back.
The son was taking good care of her.
He was going to build a house
and then settle her in whenever he had money.
In a lot of these cases,
these people who are working as observers
are their families' breadwinners.
Yeah, there's like a huge grief there. It's just devastating.
You lose the person and then you lose
the sense that he'll have any justice.
[tense music]
[traffic ambience]
What have you investigated?
Because I knew that he had
been doing a lot of work in this area.
What's your understanding of the current arrangement
and what's happening with the observer thing?
Waking up one morning to hear that an observer,
someone that is representing
the country, representing us
with over 3 million people who depend on fisheries
for their livelihood and their income,
losing or going missing,
going missing without a trace of him.
A lot needs to be done
as far as this program is concerned,
and as far as the individuals
who are into it are concerned.
[waves crashing]
We tell them to go and report on illegalities,
and when they do report accurately,
their lives are in danger and no one protects them.
Such was the life of Essien and everybody
seems to have gone quiet
on this Essien case.
But we need to revive it.
If not for Essien, for the dozens of observers
that are currently there.
Now, it puts them in fear.
But they can't also stay at home and go hungry.
We need to find those that are behind the disappearance
of Emmanuel Essien. In fact, we need to know, otherwise,
the entire observer thing is a charade.
[brooding music]
[distant fog horn]
[traffic ambience]
So we've come to Vigo for this conference, of course.
And something that's come up is the inaction
around these observer incidents.
It is a general problem
of lack of consequences for noncompliance.
We are talking about human lives in danger.
I mean, Greenpeace, for instance, has documented
absolutely horrendous cases of modern day slavery
on board fishing vessels.
You know, where are the consequences?
I mean, this is still going on.
It goes beyond the problem of observers.
There seems to be a real institutional paralysis.
It's very difficult to move governments to act
because they tend to represent, first and foremost,
the interest of their fishing industries.
Clearly, this has to change.
[seagulls keowing]
Now we're heading over to the International Fisheries
Observer and Monitoring Conference.
[conference ambience]
I feel it's important to have representation
of observer rights.
I'm here to represent the interests
of observer safety and security,
and we've seen a number of observer
injuries and fatalities over recent years.
We have to be able to set up systems
that protect the interests of the observers.
[conference ambience] [gentle score]
We're giving ourselves
an opportunity by being here to talk
to the observer community
and some of the people that are involved.
Government officials.
It will be fascinating to get in
and have a look around and see what the atmosphere is like
and see how they react
to having strangers wandering around.
[conference ambience]
I work for a major regulatory group
as an observer for NOAA.
And so I'm here to represent the observer community.
We see a lot of issues in the Pacific Ocean around China.
Some observers deal with things like survival
on their boats and dealing with very
major conflicts with fishing crew.
Intimidation, coercion, sexual and physical harassment.
I've even had an observer friend who lost his life.
[waves crashing]
We're regulated primarily by our government
or by the
the commissions that we work for,
but we're employed by contractors,
and that gets difficult for us
to know who to turn to for support.
[gentle atmospheric score]
See what they have...
done.
This is the "in memory of observers
lost in the line of duty."
They reserve this one seat at this conference.
It started last year after Keith died.
Keith was a big part of this conference.
He was probably the moving force behind
observer representation.
A Korean observer died in the Antarctic
on the FV Inseong No. 1, a Korean vessel.
Two unknown observers disappeared in Angola.
We know that there’s
three additional observers who've died in the last year.
Let me welcome everybody
to Vigo and to the International Fisheries
Observer and Monitoring Conference.
And in this opening session, we'll...
We weren't able to come into
that session with our cameras.
A number of suicides have happened.
I have been sexually harassed on a vessel.
A fire every day? Is that acceptable?
So how did that go?
Oh. Oh, terrible.
Terrible? Not as well as you'd hope.
Yeah.
We really didn't hear much from the observers
this whole conference.
I, I can’t understand this need for secrecy,
either broadly or even here this week.
I can't either. I can't either, you know, it's just it's,
all I can think of is that they just don't
want the public to know,
that there's a problem.
Why not?
Because it would indicate
how incompetent they are at protecting observers. And.
And, and if the public knew that,
you know, we can't protect the observers,
they would begin to wonder about the data,
and rightly so.
There's no...
obligation to transparency.
It's not going to work,
because the whole problem is that it's not transparent
and that the public is not finding out about this stuff.
Who do you think's driving driving this?
The industry, of course.
They can't, they can't protect observers.
There's too many millions of dollars
and you know, there's too much money.
You know?
I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen.
You know, instead of addressing the issues
that we brought up
at this conference 20 years ago, 18 years ago,
they're just, you know, on this trajectory
towards replacing observers.
This conference has progressively gone towards
electronic monitoring technology
as a means of monitoring the fisheries.
It's one of the biggest challenges in fisheries
management is
getting all the countries on the same page and working
to improve the sustainability of these fisheries.
[underwater bubbles]
There's a lot of talk in the world of observers
about replacing the actual humans
with some sort of camera surveillance.
So I think the good news is that we're starting
to see real momentum with electronic monitoring.
Off the record, you can hear that some observers
fear this technology and believe that EM,
electronic monitoring,
is an industry ploy to control fishing data
and cut out and ignore human observer reports.
Electronic monitoring can allow industry
to fake self-regulation
much better than with human observers.
Just get rid of the human witness totally.
Then there will be no need to bribe observers or kill them.
Electronic monitoring,
in some sense, is very sophisticated.
In another sense, it's quite simple.
It's essentially putting video cameras,
sensors and GPS aboard fishing vessels.
We're investing heavily in machine learning
and artificial intelligence
to differentiate
between tunas and turtles, and ultimately to flag
when when sharks are getting finned.
It's an opt in system. They're just guidelines.
So what is the power
of having video cameras on fishing vessels?
And we've got to create value
for all the stakeholders involved.
That action has got to be not just around management,
but around creating private sector value.
[seagulls keowing]
Moving from
a few thousand vessels globally today
to tens and hundreds of thousands
of vessels over the coming years.
You know, that certainly would be safer for the observers.
If there's no observer on board,
then the observer can't be pushed overboard.
But of course, that kind of surveillance
is very easily manipulated.
So whether it would actually do as good a job as,
the human observers, I think is a really big question.
[triumphant music]
Port of Majuro is the most active transfer port
in the world.
There are vessels from all of the top
distant water fishing countries,
China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the EU and the US.
Francisco Blaha ensures that the catches
are legitimate with license fees
from all Pacific Island states.
Since I came to the Pacific 27 years ago,
tuna has been central to my life.
[underwater bubbles]
Look, the future of fisheries is the future of
of us as a society, you know?
We decide what we're going to do with it.
The main area that is of concern for us
in the Pacific is the issue of,
un-reporting or reporting the wrong species.
I was told many years ago that lying is easy,
lying consistently is very hard.
And part of what I do is working
with the fisheries officers
to see if there was any lying,
how to gather evidence to prove it.
In this case, we have a vessel arriving tomorrow.
So this is a system of control on what happens in our port.
We're meeting up with government officials
from the Marshall Islands, and we are going to board
a tuna purse seine vessel that's coming into port.
[boat motor] [stern music]
We've got our permit.
We go on board with information
and we go on board to verify this information.
Prove us you did something right.
This vessel,
we have information on the system
that he has a license for two countries, yet
it has operated in three.
So we will board the vessel with this information
and verify that the licenses on board
relate to the operations that they have.
[loudspeaker announcement]
We have the intelligence file of the vessel.
And this is just a zoom of where
they were fishing in Kiribas. - Yes.
This is consistent with fishing operation.
We need to do our job now. So we need to go to the bridge.
Okay.
[wind flapping]
[crew chatter]
Hey Cap, how’re you doing? - Morning, gentlemen.
Good morning. Thank you for allowing us on board.
Oh, no problem.
Anyway, Captain, we'll need your log book,
log sheets and those...
I keep my logbooks in my room.
If you can bring the log book here, that’s appreciated.
Pardon me?
If you could bring the log book here, then that’s appreciated.
Why do you need to go through my log book?
Shit, are we on film right now?
No, no, just take it, take it off.
[wrenching]
[loudspeaker announcement]
There are no easy solutions.
There are no silver bullets.
But, why not get mad
at the subsidies that maintain fishing companies?
Instead of getting mad
at the fishermen that are just doing their job.
[mechanical sounds]
[crew chatter]
This is the log book. It’s the Bible on board.
And that's where they caught, how much they caught.
So it's a lot of fish. I mean, that's 20 tonnes in one set,
hundred tons in one set.
Yeah, that’s nothing.
80 tonnes in one set.
Yeah, there’s 140... tonnes in one set.
So from 6 to 9.
So three hours of fishing and they caught 80 tonnes of fish.
It's incredible.
That's... [Blaha laughing]
A lot of the perceptions about the complete catastrophe
of the fisheries, etc etc...
They may be right for other parts of the world,
but in the Pacific it's pretty well managed.
My position is not saying that things are perfect.
No at all.
There's a lot of work to be done,
there's a lot of work being done.
But when you
put those volumes in context, they're massive.
If you were to put all the skipjack
caught in the Pacific head to tail, it will go from Earth
to the moon
plus 100,000 km further.
That's a staggering volume of fish.
[fins flapping]
[helicopter blades]
We can consume these fish out of the ocean
more than any other animal on earth.
[rattling]
[underwater splashing]
Fishing for skipjack and other species is legal.
They have these giant legal super purse seiners out there,
and the scale at which they operate is so clearly immoral.
You look and you say,
no other animal on the planet
could take this many fish out at this moment in time.
We are a super-predator.
[fin flapping]
3 percent of the ocean is actually protected today.
We're an order of magnitude
away from actually having a sustainable ocean,
when it comes to protections.
If you thought of the ocean as a giant game of Jenga,
you have to ask how many times you can take away a piece
before the whole thing collapses.
And overfishing is constantly taking away pieces.
And so how long do we have before we’re at game over?
[ambient music]
China is the biggest distant water fishing nation.
They have over 200 purse seiners
but, thousand nine-hundred long liners.
Who's going to try to put a finger up the ass of a giant,
you know?
[tense music]
Could you just position
tuna, the industry, the fisheries in itself,
in the Pacific, in the whole geopolitical dynamics
and how to see it a bit more with perspective?
The issue of the tuna fisheries has always been high up
on the leaders' agenda.
It's geopolitical and it's about,
exerting influence in the Pacific.
And it's because the US fishes here. EU fishes here.
For a long time China has been there.
This has been an interesting week
with the forum leaders meeting.
The US treaty was endorsed.
Why now?
What is the... hype all about?
Well, to be very frank,
I think a lot of it is because of China.
[wind flapping]
I'm very pleased to
welcome the vice president of the United States of America,
Kamala Harris.
The United States is a proud Pacific nation.
America, has come together to try and be a counter
to China's moves.
Should the Pacific be scared of China?
I think so.
The US had not been paying much attention to the Pacific
as much as they are now, and I think that
Vice President Kamala Harris opening up the
leaders meeting was quite symbolic.
[applause]
How does China show up?
Like, where are the footprints?
There's a lot of tentacles of how China is here.
There's the official and unofficial.
When you scratch the surface,
we don't know how many Chinese vessels,
are licensed to fish in our waters.
We've had a horrific beheading in the Fiji waters
on a Chinese long liner where
till now, no one knows what happened.
There was a beheading of a crew member.
People are being killed
because they've seen things, or they know things
that affect that money.
Our enforcement measures are pretty pitiful.
They have just come into a sovereign state
and surpassed all our sovereignty.
China is a predator and we are the prey.
Its influence over
some of the Pacific island governments is rife.
Bribes, payments, corruption.
There are arrangements where they get a reduced rate
as a result of their investment in the region.
It builds their schools. It pays for their roads.
To quote The Godfather, it's an offer you can't refuse.
[tense music]
Tuna is rather remarkable.
They go from east to west and west to east.
And when you look at their tracks,
they’re following the great current and warmth.
There's basically a huge oval across the Pacific.
But through it there are high seas pockets
and there are a number in the South Pacific.
But most tellingly, I think
there is one between Fiji and Vanuatu.
It's not a large area,
but it's a relatively lucrative area.
[tense music]
And what is happening is that the Chinese
have vacuumed it.
[tense music]
And they now need big new fisheries.
[wind flapping]
The entire operation has been run out of Suva in Fiji,
and it's offering China a keyhole
into plundering the tuna because tuna is migratory.
And so if they're there at the key times,
they get all the fish.
[waves crashing]
Waves of Chinese boats
are coming in strip mining the Pacific.
[tense music]
[industrial ambience]
China is one of the states that has spearheaded
the notion of state protected illegal fishing.
The state uses its own resources,
its own assets, its own military
and law enforcement infrastructure
to protect its illegal fishing interests.
They are in the practice of human rights violation.
They do illegal, unregulated fishing.
And I've had a lot of visits from China
to obtain licenses here,
and I've just basically told them that
they can’t on my watch.
They unload here,
they will have to pay 450 dollars a tonne.
There are hundreds
of billions of dollars a year in the fishing sector.
And we are seeing
a great increase in large scale criminality.
[tense music]
And all too often, those who understand the value
of the maritime domain the best,
are the criminals that would do it harm.
[waves crashing]
This summer, a fleet of more than
300 Chinese fishing boats spent a month
raiding the waters around the islands of Galapagos.
Hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels were caught
pillaging a reported 200,000
tonnes of squid this year from North Korean waters,
against U.N. sanctions.
[tense music]
You get some boat that’s been subsidized by Beijing.
They load it up with people from Indonesia at cheap, cheap wages.
They re-register it as a Vanuatu flagged company.
You go to Vanuatu,
a Pacific state that was founded in the 70s.
Now all their fishing boats are Chinese.
Vanuatu seems to have a policy based around
no control at all.
It's breathtaking.
[wind flapping] [tense music]
So the whole thing is just a mockery.
[tense music]
[boat motor]
[drum beats]
As natives and members of fishing communities,
fishing is all our source of livelihood.
Any activity that undermines or deprives us of our catch,
is of concern to us.
Now, the dominance of the industrial sector
by Chinese affiliates, if I may put it that way,
it's a great source of worry.
[traffic ambience]
They are visible everywhere
in the construction space,
in schools, building of schools,
in building hospitals, in building stadia.
In all of that, you find the Chinese.
And their dominance in this country
is becoming more visible and visible and visible.
And people have even concluded that
if care is not taken,
China could take over the entire country.
[brooding music]
[waves and seagulls]
Industrialized fishing nations
are stealing fish from the waters of developing countries.
Because developing countries are
selling off their fishing rights
to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder is often
coming in at a really low bid.
[bell ringing]
90 percent of these vessels are foreign owned.
They have linkages to other countries like China.
There are some bullies out there in the ocean
that won't take no for an answer.
[brooding music]
There's a lot of incentive for
people to break the rules.
The enforcement has been weak
to the point that money changes hands.
Foreign industrial fisheries are mostly subsidized
by the countries that sends them.
They have access to the West African coast
through so-called access agreements,
negotiated privately with a fisheries minister.
And the money ends up in Switzerland
in a private account.
Our oceans have been the victim of a Ponzi scheme.
[brooding music]
[water splashing]
It's an extractive industry.
And like all extractive industries,
there's a lot of collateral damage.
[tense music]
If you are not careful beyond a certain point now,
one day we’ll wake up
the fishermen will go and then come back and say,
we didn't catch any fish today.
Tomorrow the story will be the same.
The next day to be the same and that will be it.
We are getting close to a point where
our stocks will collapse,
and then anybody that is engaged
in fisheries related activities,
2.7 million people will be rendered completely jobless.
And we all know the risks.
If there are no fish to catch, if there's no work to do,
there'll be all kinds of criminal activities
and there will be spillovers to other parts of the world.
If these able bodied people of men
and women cannot catch fish,
they will take into drug trafficking,
human trafficking.
They will migrate to other parts of the world.
Some will become pirates. Because they are
very good at sea, they will become pirates.
Some may begin to organize themselves
into militia groups and fighting and kidnapping people.
It's not just a figment of anyone's imagination.
These are realities.
Stocks have collapsed elsewhere
and our stocks are on the verge of collapse
if nothing is done.
[reflective music]
Three years on, Essien is nowhere to be found.
That has to be solved. Things seem to be in limbo.
The person is not dead.
The person is missing. We can't find the person.
Do we pronounce the person dead?
Should you organize a funeral for the person?
I mean, who is responsible? Whose company owns that vessel?
We need to find answers to all of this.
Whatever it takes, I will get to the bottom of the matter.
And that is our calling as journalists.
If the right answers are not coming, we'll keep pushing.
[crew chanting]
[reflective music]
Observers are there to tell the truth.
There is little doubt that the observers
are seeing illegal activity all of the time.
[seagulls keowing]
And so it comes as no surprise that these vulnerable
individuals who are brave enough
to take these jobs as observers, go missing.
[reflective music]
And there's no excuse for it.
Anybody who tries to make the world better
in any capacity,
you realize, like you're up against forces
that are way bigger and more powerful than you.
It's incredibly admirable to keep fighting.
What's the option otherwise?
You just get cynical?
We must all complement the science we do,
with activism.
What motivates me to fight for the ocean is the fear
of the generations to come.
That they will not have or enjoy what we have.
Hello!
I have a very big family.
My parents have more than 30 grandchildren
and more than a dozen great grandchildren.
It’s so lovely to be home.
Welcome home.
And as a Pacific Islander, I have as much right
as any government
and as much right as any industry,
and as much right as any consumer.
This fish comes from this region.
My people are the ones that have died.
This is why I do what I do.
That's why I'm an activist.
I'm committed.
[reflective music]
Every time I look at the ocean,
I see my brother,
I think of him.
I miss him.
[reflective music]
My brother has gone.
He may not get the justice that he deserves, but there's
many of these similar stories.
[atmospheric music]
I know tuna is very important.
But then, if we are valuing money
more than the lives of our citizens, then, then...
Please,
can somebody feel how I feel?
This has got to stop.
It's got to stop.
This world, this industry, this thing that's like
trying to be invisible and opaque and hidden.
[underwater whoosh] [protest ambience]
Shedding light on it, bringing it out into the open.
Making it something that more people know about.
For the observers, that's justice.
[atmospheric music] [Indistinct vocals]
[ukulele strumming]