Looting the Seas II

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Ajani Winston/iWatch News

Decades of overfishing have left Europe’s fish stocks in peril and its fishermen in poverty. It’s an impasse paid for by EU taxpayers. Yet a proposed revision of the EU’s fishing law, hailed as sweeping reform, is rapidly losing momentum.

A look at the industry’s biggest player — Spain — shows what officials are up against. Billions of euros in subsidies built its bloated fleet and propped up a money-losing industry.  All the while companies systematically flout the rules while officials overlook fraud and continue to fund offenders, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found.

“Spain has earned its bad reputation,” said Ernesto Penas Lado, director of policy and enforcement at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. “The problem is others don’t have the reputation and deserve it just as much.”

Spain may not be alone. But as the EU’s most powerful fishing fleet, it is the starkest example of a failed EU policy, critics say.

The Spanish fishing industry has received more than €5.8 billion (more than $8 billion) in subsidies since 2000 for everything from building new vessels and breaking down old ships to payments for retiring fishermen and training for the next generation, an unprecedented analysis by ICIJ shows. Subsidies account for almost a third of the value of the industry. Simply put, nearly one in three fish caught on a Spanish hook or raised in a Spanish farm is paid for with public money.

Looting the Seas II

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Vidal Armadores’ Galaecia was built with subsidies and fished with subsidized licenses. The company was fined by Spain when someone tampered with the vessel's global positioning system. The Galaecia was being investigated again when it sunk in 2008.  New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries
One of the world’s most controversial fishing operations — a family-controlled company in northwestern Spain linked to more than 40 cases of alleged illegal fishing — is changing tack.

Looting the Seas II

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Spanish-Namibian fishing magnate José Luis Bastos says his close friendship with political powerhouse and former president Sam Nujoma doesn’t reap him any favors. John Grobler/ICIJ
Spanish companies are catching an estimated seven of 10 Namibian hakes in what has been considered one of the world’s richest fishing grounds. Despite warnings that the stock could drop further from an already alarmingly low level, the government of Namibia this year increased the quotas for hake catches.

Looting the Seas II

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Hake is Spain’s most popular fish. The average citizen eats more than four kilos per year. Mar Cabra/ICIJ
Consumers in Spain trust the mild-flavored white flesh of hake, the most popular fish in a country that eats more seafood than almost any other in Europe. Hake is considered safe for pregnant women, and kids crunch into the cod-like fillets as fishsticks.

Looting the Seas II

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Regulators around the world have pointed to Vidal Armadores in more than 40 allegations of illegal fishing. The company's co-owner, Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego, is pictured here with unidentified acquaintances. He says he is the victim of an international conspiracy by big fishing nations. New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries

A Spanish ship-owner with a voluminous record of skirting international laws – and who swears he has never fished illegally – has been sentenced in Spain to one year and eight months in prison for trying to unload fish caught by one of his vessels.

An Australian patrol boat spotted the Hammer, owned by Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego, fishing without authorization in protected Antarctic waters in December 2005. In an attempt to mask the source of those fish, Vidal Pego twice renamed the vessel, finally settling on Chilbo San 33 and registering the ship in North Korea. The shipment of 240 tons of Chilean sea bass was confiscated by South Korean authorities after it was sold for more than $2.7 million to Uruguay-based Coast Line S.A., an affiliate of the Spanish seafood company Freiremar.

According to the sentencing documents, Vidal Pego masked from his trade partners that he had used a boat blacklisted for having previously circumvented international regulations. Once a boat lands in a black list it is banned from fishing in protected Antarctic waters.

Vidal Pego's lawyer said in court that the charge stems from an error on the company’s import declaration and has appealed the case.  “We’re sure we will win, because we’re right,” said Foro Hernández, spokesperson for Vidal Pego, in an interview with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Looting the Seas II

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Nine organizations of the Spanish fishing industry attacked ICIJ's 'Looting the Seas II' investigation during a press conference in Madrid. Mar Cabra/ICIJ
The latest investigation of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is part of an “international campaign against Spain and its fishing industry," representatives of the Spanish fishing industry announced at a press conference held today in front of the Spanish Fishing Secretariat in Madrid.

Looting the Seas II

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Hake is Spain's most popular fish, but consumers aren't always getting what they think they are buying. A scientific study commissioned by the International Center for Investigative Journalists found that almost one in 10 fish purchased at markets in Spain were mislabeled. This video follows reporters buying the fish and explains why mislabeling can mask bigger problems in the oceans.

Looting the Seas II

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The most commonly consumed fish in Spain is hake. Based on allegations of fraud in the hake market, ICIJ carried out a DNA study on hake in the Spanish market.

Last year a team of Spanish and Greek researchers at the University of Oviedo and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki published a study on high levels of apparently intentional mislabeling of hake imports in their respective countries.

Southern African hake species were mainly being marketed as European or South American Hake. European and South American hakes are worth double the amount of southern African hakes, researchers noted. Following publication, the Spanish government requested a copy of the study, but the official report did not include company names. The lead researcher Eva García Vázquez told ICIJ she would have provided the names associated with the mislabeled samples had officials asked.

The researchers also experienced complaints from industry. So when ICIJ requested the company identities, García declined to share that information. ICIJ decided to undertake its own snapshot study in Madrid –Spain’s capital– to determine if mislabeling was still occurring. ICIJ commissioned García Vázquez and her team at the University of Oviedo to conduct a second study to determine the extent of mislabeling in the fresh and frozen hake markets.  

DNA experts told ICIJ our methodology was sound and simple. Geneticist Einar Neisen from the National Institute of Aquatic Resources at the Technical University of Denmark called the work “a walk in the park” as it was easy to identify the different species. The case might have been different if ICIJ were trying to determine the geographical locations among samples of the same species.

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