Later, Cagilaba learned that the coordinator was friends with the Sea Quest’s agent, another cog in a shaky wheel, rattled by corruption. Once told to get back aboard, he knew his report would be buried. And that if he didn’t make it known soon, somehow, he was unlikely to get off the Sea Quest alive.
‘Retailer Apathy’ for Addressing Marine Observer Safety
According to the survey of American observers by NOAA Fisheries, among the 46 percent who said they had been harassed at sea, most were either dissatisfied or nonplussed by the experience of reporting it. Nearly 60 percent of those who made reports said there was no response. And some feared the repercussions of saying anything: fewer deployments, assignments back to problem vessels. “Some respondents mentioned that most of time they handled situations on their own, since they felt that some observer program staff would not take their reports seriously,” the survey found.
The extent to which officials in observer programs and oversight agencies were being co-opted into the dark underworld of tuna—and how often tuna brands play along—would become better understood in 2020. That’s the year that Eritara Aati Kaierua, a fishery observer from Kiribati, was brought ashore lifeless by a Taiwanese purse seiner, the Win Far 636, after a tuna fishing trip off the coast of Nauru.
Observer harassment aboard fishing vessels is well understood, but observers also face harassment from compromised program and agency staff.
Kaierua should have been protected under the new WCPFC mandate for observer safety. But while working as part of a special project to certify tuna for MSC, he was found dead in one of the boat’s cabins. An autopsy later conducted in Fiji found he had died from a blow to the head. Local authorities next opened a murder investigation, but it has never concluded.
“We initially heard that it was homicide. Then seven months later, we heard of a second opinion that changed the cause of death to natural causes due to hypertension,” Nicky Kaierua, his sister, said in an email. She added that she has seen the initial autopsy report on her brother and is confident that hypertension didn’t cause his death. That word—hypertension—has now been used to explain two other observer deaths, and families of observers missing and murdered in the Pacific have come together in grief to note their experiences with its use.
Some charge that authorities are unmotivated to resolve such cases in countries that are economically dependent on fishing, or reluctant to take a tough stance on all crimes at sea. Tuna accounts for a substantial share of jobs in the Pacific Islands and an often-larger share of public spending. In Kiribati, for example, tuna revenues fuel 63 percent of the national budget. The geopolitics and jurisdictional mayhem involved with prosecuting crimes aboard foreign fishing vessels, or involving citizens from other countries or both, also don’t make it easy.
Meanwhile, Nicky Kaierua said, “My brother’s ‘unsolved’ death has had devastating impacts on our family.” Like many observers, Kaierua was his family’s breadwinner, supporting a wife and four children who have had little financial support since he died. “Fisheries observers are often forewarned that the job is risky. They are also told that the position comes with good pay because of the risk that comes with it. My brother earned 60 Australian dollars a day. Should we be lenient on their safety because they get a little bit extra?”
According to the investigation by Human Rights at Sea, after the Win Far 636 brought Kaierua’s body back to port, it took regional authorities another 38 days to suspend the boat’s certificate to fish in the MSC program. MSC later emphasized that its certification was an environmental standard, not a human rights one, in a statement, which noted that it took steps to assure that no catch from the vessel entered the supply chain as MSC-certified.
Some charge that authorities are unmotivated to resolve such cases in countries that are economically dependent on fishing; in Kiribati, for example, tuna revenues fuel 63 percent of the national budget.
APO has since recommended that programs like MSC have criteria that protect observers and processes that gauge whether those programs work. APO has also pressed the international community to outlaw observer harassment globally and document observer deaths for the public.
In response to such critiques, the MSC introduced new requirements in October 2022 that “entities involved in unacceptable conduct inclusive of mistreatment of crew and fisheries observers must be removed from MSC certificates.” It also gave $137,000 toward the development of communications technology and a review of observer programs in April 2021. But those changes won’t impact the Win Far 636. In July 2022, after no criminal charges were filed in Kaierua’s death, the boat was again certified to fish MSC tuna through 2025.
Observer advocates admit that blacklisting problem boats and companies can sometimes backfire anyway, making space for other bad actors. Most believe the best response to human rights abuses would be for grocers to use their market heft to directly push their suppliers toward better practices, moving the whole market. Among retailers that use MSC as a proxy for examining supply chains, however, that conversation isn’t happening, at least not publicly.
Costco declined to comment for this article. Neither Albertsons, Walmart, nor Aldi responded to requests for interviews or comments. And it’s this distinctive indifference, an overall lack of action, that critics describe as most problematic, an institutional buck-passing that is a defining characteristic of the tuna marketplace.
“You can call it retailer apathy,” said Talwar of Greenpeace. In its own survey of tuna retailers, Greenpeace found that only five of 16 of the largest retailers that sell tuna took specific steps to advocate for observer protections. Among those, most had only gone as far as to formally encourage observer programs to work together toward an International Observer Bill of Rights. In evaluating tuna retailers overall, Talwar said, “They’re far behind anything that we would expect from companies that are in this business.”
Most believe the best response to human rights abuses would be for grocers to use their market heft to directly push their suppliers toward better practices, moving the whole market.
Most large retailers just return to the same big cans. They buy from StarKist, Chicken of the Sea, and Bumble Bee, primarily, and acquiesce to whatever supply-chain due-diligence the brands provide. In its investigation of Kaierua’s death, Human Rights at Sea found that it was most likely Bumble Bee’s parent company, FCF, that bought the tuna from the ill-fated voyage. It wasn’t the first time that suspected illegal fishing was found in the Bumble Bee supply chain. In March 2023, Bumble Bee agreed to remove the terms “fair and safe supply chain” and “fair and responsible working conditions” from its website, social media, and advertising for a decade after being sued by a labor rights group for allegedly violating consumer protection laws by claiming them.
But not much, otherwise, has changed. The Win Far 636, while it continues fishing, is just as connected to the tuna marketplace as ever, one of 27 vessels owned by a consortium of companies that delivers its MSC catch to FCF for canning for Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, among other brands. Then there’s that other vessel, the Sea Quest. At the time of Cagilaba’s voyage, it was owned by a company run by a prominent group of tuna executives, including those with ties to Chicken of the Sea, Mitsui, and headed by FCF president, Max Chou. A spokesman for the company declined to comment, citing corporate policy.
Technology, Policy, and Consumer Pressure for Change
Cagilaba never got back aboard the Sea Quest. After his supervisor told him to, he refused and walked straight to the refuge of the U.S. Embassy in Majuro, Marshall Islands, where officials reacted swiftly. They sent a message to NOAA recommending that Cagilaba not be sent back to the vessel. And, he told Congress, they secured his report to keep it from being buried once he arrived back in Fiji and gave it to his employer.
That report later led to an investigation that, like that of Kaierua’s death, went nowhere. Then the Sea Quest also disappeared. Records show it was renamed Joe Turner, sold to a new owner in the Philippines, and now fishes tuna for a seafood company that charters it from Papua New Guinea. Nambawan Seafoods PNG Limited is one of FCF’s many partners in the region.
It is common for formal inquiries like Cagilaba’s to be abandoned, languishing in a state of perpetual unresolve, and for problem boats to vanish into the opacity of the tuna supply chain, while issues aboard go unresolved. Yet a combination of technology, policy, and consumer pressure on suppliers could actually keep the problem from happening in the first place.