In September, Ambassador David Balton, a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Initiative, testified before the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, testifying against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing). “We don’t even know just how much illegal fishing is going on,” said Ambassador David Balton, a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, in a recent Wilson Center NOW interview. IUU fishing is a major threat to the global fisheries industry as well as the oceans. “Even when nations get together and establish rules for fisheries or stocks across jurisdictional lines, it’s difficult to enforce the rules against everyone, and there is unfortunately a high percentage of illegal fishing that takes place.”

When asked about the size of the problem, he said it was hard to precisely quantify the amount of IUU fishing happening. While some fisheries are healthy and well-maintained, a rising proportion of the industry is overfished and depleted. “Related to the problem of overfishing is the fact that not all vessels, not all fishers follow the rules that are established,” said Balton.

Efforts to minimize or prevent overfishing have been made, but it remains unclear whether illegal fishing practices will overshadow legal fishing activity and regulations. “Fishing in the ocean requires cooperation among many nations,” said Balton, “so even if some nations are on the ball and trying to push forward, those who have large fishing fleets and who are not doing enough to control them remain a big problem.” To combat these issues with IUU fishing on local and international levels, many maritime countries created the 2009 Port State Measures Agreement. As Balton put it, the main idea of this treaty is “all fish caught at sea ultimately need to be landed somewhere at a port.” At that moment, the port state can limit the amount of illegally harvested fish that can be landed or transferred at port.

IUU fishing is just one of numerous factors depleting the health of the world’s oceans. Another example Balton cited is coral reefs dying off, saying “pollution, particularly nutrient pollution, coming out from rivers is helping to destroy coral reefs, so is the warming of the ocean and acidification of the ocean.” Even certain kinds of fisheries over coral reefs can adversely affect reef systems.

The future may not be so bleak, however. Consumers, especially in the United States and Europe, are willing to buy fish caught sustainably and legally, and much more information is now available to consumers about which fish are coming from sustainable sources. “In a perfect world, you’d be able to walk into a restaurant or a market and know exactly where a fish was caught, who caught it, whether it was caught sustainably, whether it’s really the kind of fish that it says it is,” said Balton. “We’re not quite in that world yet, but nevertheless there is a lot information available to consumers.”