Long Line Fishery 

Over the past decade I’ve spent many months on the high seas far away for any county EEZ out in international waters particularly in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Most of the assignments were with @greenpeace @greenpeaceuk and my own personal projects, for a body of work on the shark fin trade. 

In this set of images, I document a longline fishery. Mostly on the Asian vessels, with a focus on the Taiwanese fisheries, as they targeted sharks as well as tuna. 

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Each boat has several longlines out at anyone time, each line can be up to a 100 miles long, with anything from 2000 to 3000 baited hooks. Imagine just the Taiwanese fishing fleet has over 2200 registered vessels plus many unregistered each with just one longline out. How many hooks, how many miles spanning the globe. Most of these boats operate as tuna boats but they target swordfish, Marlins, Mahi Mahi and sharks. Even though sharks are listed as by-catch. Turtles, rays and even seabirds sadly are the real by-catch. @greenpeace_tw 

Human rights abuses are prevalent in the fishery. In a recent report, one fisher reported working hour after hour with no sleep, 34 hours straight, shark finning and illegal transfer of crew and shark fins between vessels. “ We only kept the fins of the shark and discard of their meat. I placed the fins out under the sun to dry, but a few days later, we spotted an American patrol boat, the captain got really scared and told me to hide all the the fins. “ 

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Fong Chun Formosa a Taiwanese fishing company recently acquired US seafood Company Bumble Bee. @bumblebeefoods 

As a result a large portion of the tuna landing in the USA is from these Taiwanese fleets. You decide if you still want to support this industry. Every dollar you spend has an impact