Sustainable seafood means little if exploitation remains hidden at sea.
Brussels, Belgium
The European Union is intensifying scrutiny of working conditions in the global fishing industry after testimony before the European Parliament exposed cases involving extreme hours, withheld documents, unsafe conditions and lack of clean drinking water. Indonesian fisherman Fredi Seprizal described spending 16 months aboard a Chinese vessel, where he said shifts often lasted between 16 and 20 hours and could extend to 24 hours. His account was presented during a debate focused on the social dimension of sustainable fishing. The discussion has shifted attention from how fish are caught to how the people catching them are treated.
The problem extends far beyond one testimony. Research presented during the debate, based on interviews with fishers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia and Fiji, found that 94 percent had experienced unpaid wages at some point. All of those interviewed reported having contracts changed to less favorable conditions, while one in four had witnessed the death of a colleague. Deaths were also recorded on one in four vessels included in the study. Those findings suggest that labor abuse can become embedded inside parts of the international seafood supply chain.
For European policymakers, the central challenge is enforcement. Existing international standards already establish minimum labor protections for fishing crews, but ratification and implementation remain uneven. Only 27 states have ratified the International Labour Organization’s Work in Fishing Convention. European institutions are therefore under growing pressure to ensure that seafood entering the EU market is not produced under conditions that would be unacceptable aboard European vessels.
That debate is becoming increasingly economic as well as ethical. European fleets argue that they face higher operating costs because they must comply with stricter environmental, safety and labor standards. If imports produced under weaker conditions enter the same market without equivalent requirements, the result can create competitive pressure against companies that follow higher standards. Labor rights therefore intersect directly with trade policy, market access and supply-chain transparency.
The EU’s forced labor regulation could become a major instrument in that transition as implementation advances toward 2027. Industry representatives and labor advocates are calling for stronger controls over contracts, recruitment agencies, wages and mechanisms for workers to report abuses without retaliation. The objective is to move from formal compliance toward effective protection throughout the seafood economy.
Fishing sustainability can no longer be measured only by fish stocks, emissions or marine ecosystems. It must also include the people whose labor keeps the industry operating, often thousands of kilometers from public view.
A sustainable supply chain cannot be built on invisible workers.