A senior cardinal has warned of the human and economic cost of exploitation in the “deadly” fishing industry. With the pandemic straining already weak regulatory and support frameworks for fisherfolk, Cardinal Peter Turkson noted, the pay and working conditions of those employed at sea are under serious threat.
“Unless we draw our attention to these continuous abuses and violations at sea and work together to create a fishing industry where the human and labor rights of the fishers are guaranteed and promoted, it might become more difficult to eradicate it,” he wrote in his message for World Fisheries day. “The human and economic cost for the industry would be very high”.
Turkson, Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, added that bad conditions, hazardous journeys, and sometimes violent clashes with other seafarers made the industry a “deadly” one – with over 24,000 deaths each year. The industry was rife with unscrupulous fishing vessel owners who participate in illegal fishing and transnational criminal activities, such as trafficking in drugs, weapons and even human beings.
The coronavirus pandemic had a significant impact on a British fishing industry already struggling under the impact of storms throughout 2020.
Domestically, the UK fishing industry experienced a drop of 368,000 fishing hours in last year, or 16.5 per cent compared with 2019. Further afield, other seafaring nations ran into similar difficulties, with China experiencing a fall of 2 million fishing hours, a drop of 13.5 per cent from pre-pandemic figures. Overall, fishing activity was down five per cent globally in 2020 compared with the previous year, according to figures collated by Global Fishing Watch.
In some areas, the figure could be far higher, with one study estimating fishing dropped 50 and even 80 per cent in the Adriatic sea during the lockdown.
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