A new study has found that illegal tuna fishing in the Pacific Ocean is bringing in profits of $520 to $740 million a year.
The study, carried out by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, found that illegal fishing is typically carried out by licensed vessels that under-report their catches or transfer them to other ships at sea. That adds up to somewhere between 276,000 to 338,000 tons of illegally caught Pacific tuna every year.
The study did not name the specific nations where the poached fish end up, but Japan, which is the world's largest consumer of tuna, clearly must be the market for much of it. Still, no one knows for sure because it is almost impossible to monitor. There are almost no international resources in place to check where fish come from, and even fewer resources to police the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean. Transferring tuna to other vessels or simply under-reporting what is caught is easily done.