Tuesday, July 7, 2026
Fishers live in fear as looming El Niño and fuel crisis pile on pressure
From the Philippines to Peru a vital industry already reeling from multiple problems faces devastation from skyrocketing fuel prices and super-charged Pacific warming.
Fishers around the Pacific are bracing for a potentially huge El Niño, which would pile pressure on an industry already struggling with surging fuel prices due to the conflict in the Gulf.
El Niño is a naturally occurring weather pattern which leads to higher surface water temperatures in much of the Pacific and disrupts fishing as animals move to find more comfortable waters.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is an 82% chance of El Niño emerging between May and July. Other scientists have raised the possibility it could be an extra-strong super El Niño.
World Meteorological Society secretary-general Celeste Saulo warned this month that a strong El Niño would “exacerbate drought and heavy rainfall and increase the risk of heatwaves both on land and in the ocean”.
The pending weather will exacerbate the issue of oil prices, which have risen by more than 25% since disruption to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, following United States and Israeli attacks on Iran. This has been particularly damaging for those fishers who use large amounts of fuel to get their boats to and from fishing grounds.
In Peru and the Philippines, Dialogue Earth found that these issues are exacerbating deep-seated existing issues for some of the world’s most economically precarious people.
Peru: Fuelling problems
In Tumbes, close to Peru’s border with Ecuador, Miguel Martínez has kept his vessel stranded on the beach for a year. “It is not profitable to go out fishing,” says the president of the Regional Federation of Selective Artisanal Fishing Organizations.
When local fishers do head out to sea, he says, their nets often return filled with purple swimming crabs (Euphylax dovii) which are attracted by warming waters but have no commercial value. He says he used to haul in 100 to 150 kilos of fish on a trip but now catches only half that on average.
“We don’t know who to turn to,” he says. “With the scarcity of species on our coast, we don’t want to invest in fuel because we barely cover costs as it is.”
War between Iran, Israel and the US triggered a huge spike in fuel prices in his country. For the nearly 96,000 artisanal fishers in Peru, the impact has been worse because they do not buy at gas stations. They buy from chatas (supply barges) which do not receive government subsidies.
Fuel used to cost 14 soles (USD 4) a gallon, says Elsa Vega, a fisher, shipowner, and president of the National Society of Artisanal Fishing. Now, she tells Dialogue Earth, the cost is between 21 and 25 soles. “Nobody controls [the supply barges],” she says.
A vessel heading out into the open sea in search of mahi-mahi can use between 1,000 to 1,500 gallons, Vega says, with no increase in fish prices to counteract the soaring fuel costs. Many fishers have seen profits fall by 40%, she says.
In February, Peru’s Commission for the National Study of the El Niño Phenomenon (Enfen) raised the alarm over a coastal El Niño, projected to extend until February 2027 and reach moderate intensity between May and August of this year.
Luis Vásquez Espinoza, spokesperson for Enfen and expert on oceanography and climate change at the Peruvian Sea Institute, says when the sea warms, commercially important fish such as anchovies seek more temperate parts of the ocean either nearer the coast or deeper. But Peruvian regulations prohibit catches in shallow waters while deeper waters are far more challenging and expensive to fish, making fishing less viable.
Despite these hardships, the number of artisanal vessels in Peru grew from nearly 18,000 in 2015 to over 23,000 in 2023 – a 29% increase in a decade, according to the NGO Oceana, squeezing incomes.
“We have a serious problem with the size of the fleet,” warns Juan Carlos Sueiro, fisheries director for Oceana in Peru. “With more and more vessels, average incomes are lower.” Many fishers are barely breaking even, he adds.
The Philippines: ‘It was better during Covid’
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, more than 50% of Philippine fishers have stopped working since the Gulf conflict as diesel prices have doubled, says Fernando Hicap, chairperson of Pamalakaya National Federation of Small Fisherfolk Organisations in the Philippines.
“It was better during Covid, because at least during Covid we could go to sea. The problem then was that consumers couldn’t buy fish because of the quarantine, but at least we had a catch,” says Hicap.
Some have sold their boats to pay off debts, he says. The rest are bracing for the coming of El Niño.
In the Philippines, El Niño can weaken the north-east monsoon. This prevailing wind drives an ocean process called upwelling which brings cold, nutrient-rich deep water to the surface, stimulating plankton growth.
Less upwelling can reduce food for small pelagic fish such as sardines and anchovies, decreasing productivity in fishing grounds, says Charina Lyn Amedo-Repollo, a researcher at the University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute. This can mean less fish for fishers, longer fishing trips, and higher fuel costs.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority show that total fisheries production between April and June 2024, during the previous El Niño, declined 6.2% year-on-year, while seaweed production, a big part of the blue economy in the Philippines, declined by 26%.
“The core issue is how many fishers would experience income instability,” says conservationist Candeze Mongaya, who previously worked with the NGOs Rare and Oceana Philippines. “We have numerical data in terms of how much the fishers have lost, but there are also indirect losses in the context of their day-to-day expenses.”
Small-scale fishers have been offered a 3,000 peso (USD 49) subsidy as a response to the rising fuel prices. But several told Dialogue Earth they need long-term solutions, not short-term, sticking plaster fixes.
This could include government help for fishers to diversify their work, so they have other sources of income, says Mongaya.
Hicap would like to see wider efforts to restore marine environments and stop the destruction of fish habitats like mangroves and reefs to sustain the catches of the future.
Keeping ecosystems healthier makes them more resilient to climate change and extreme events, and good management can increase fisheries catches, say scientists, helping to mitigate the impact of shocks like El Niño on those who rely on them.
“We shouldn’t be constructing more coastal roads; they ruin mangroves and coral reefs, and they cause erosion,” he says. “As long as those destructive projects continue, small fishers will be experiencing the effects of El Niño.”
In Peru too, there is a feeling that these latest crises show the importance of building more resilience in the fishing sector.
“We talk about sustainability,” says Vega. “But this activity also has to be sustainable for those of us who depend on it. The sea cannot turn into a graveyard of ships.”
Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources spokesperson Nazario Briguera said the agency will educate fishers and has activated a special El Niño Task Force to work on safeguarding food production.
Peru’s Ministry of Production did not respond to requests for comment.
Labour abuse is seafood’s hidden cost
Workers’ suffering is an integral part of the fisheries system, say four experts.
The most disturbing stories from fishing vessels reach the public as scenes of cruelty. A fisher is trapped at sea for months or years. Wages disappear. Passports are confiscated. A crew member is beaten, denied medical care, abandoned in a foreign port.
Public blame often centres on an outlaw vessel, an abusive captain, a corrupt company. Then everyone moves on, until the next scandal appears.
In 2015, the world was shocked by reports of enslaved fishers on Thai vessels. Yet, a decade later, not nearly enough has changed. That is what we found in our recent review of 51 peer-reviewed studies on labour exploitation in global fisheries.
We also found that abuse is not a series of scandals. It is a structural feature of how the global seafood economy operates, driven by overfishing and competitive market pressures, enabled by weak governance and sustained by the strategic use of migrant labour. The solutions that have received the most attention, including ecolabels, certification schemes and voluntary corporate pledges, are still failing many of the workers they claim to protect.
This matters because any solution depends on how the problem is understood.
If labour abuse is treated as an occasional scandal, the response will focus on catching bad actors after harm has already occurred. But if abuse is understood as a structural feature of the seafood economy, then governments, companies, markets, fisheries managers and regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) must confront the conditions that make it possible in the first place.
These conditions are not mysterious. Many fishing operations now work under severe economic pressure, with declining catches, rising costs and intense competition pushing vessels to fish farther and longer. At the same time, global markets continue to demand cheap seafood. The pressure to reduce costs is constant and labour is often the easiest cost to push down.
The machinery of control
For workers, the reduction can mean stolen wages, excessive hours, unsafe vessels, poor food, lack of rest, intimidation, debt and limited access to medical care.
For those recruited into fishing away from their home nations, the risks are even greater. Many such migrant fishers enter the sector through brokers or recruitment agencies. Some begin their journeys already in debt. Others sign contracts they cannot fully understand or later discover that the terms have changed. Once at sea, their documents can be confiscated, while their legal statuses, language barriers, and isolation can make leaving almost impossible.
The ocean itself becomes part of the machinery of control. A worker on land may be able to escape an abusive employer. A worker on a distant water fishing vessel cannot just walk away.
This is why the language of modern slavery, while powerful, can also be limiting. It captures the horror of extreme abuse, but it can make exploitation appear rare and exceptional. Many fishers experience conditions that do not fit the legal definitions of forced labour yet remain deeply coercive. A fisher may not be chained but may still be trapped by debt. They may not be formally imprisoned but may have no realistic way to exit. They may be described as free, while every material condition suggests otherwise.
Recognising this spectrum of abuse allows us to identify and denounce exploitation before it reaches its most extreme form. It also helps to avoid the comforting fiction that only the most egregious cases deserve attention.
Illegal links
Labour abuse and illegal fishing are usually treated as separate policy problems. One is a human rights issue; the other is a fisheries management issue. In practice, they often share the same origins.
A vessel that avoids fisheries rules may also avoid labour rules. Weak monitoring, complex ownership, transshipment at sea, distant operations and poor inspection systems create space for illegal fishing and worker abuse to occur simultaneously.
In some cases, exploited fishers may be forced to participate in illegal practices they did not choose. They then become both victims of abuse and potential targets of enforcement. That is a profound failure of justice.
This means labour protection is not separate from ocean sustainability. A seafood system that exploits workers is more likely to undermine the marine environment. There is no truly sustainable seafood built on human suffering.
Global blind spots
Another important finding from our work is that the world does not know enough about where this labour exploitation is happening.
Much existing research is concentrated in Southeast and East Asia, especially around Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar and South Korea. This focus is understandable; investigative journalists, civil society groups and researchers have exposed serious abuses in this region.
But the danger is that the public begins to imagine labour exploitation as mainly an Asian problem. It is not.
Large parts of the Atlantic, Africa, the Americas, the Indian Ocean and other major fishing regions remain poorly studied in the English-language academic literature, even though research on the Gulf of Guinea shows how illegal fishing can undermine livelihoods, food security and sustainable development.
Some powerful fishing nations and fleets remain remarkably difficult to examine.
This silence is troubling. It means that the geography of research may be shaping the geography of outrage. Academics and journalists watch some regions closely, while labour abuse in others remains hidden in plain sight.
Who should take action?
For policymakers, the implication is clear. Labour standards must be built into fisheries governance, not tacked on as a social concern. Fisheries management must focus on more than fish stocks, catch limits, vessels, gear and trade. A fishery cannot be called well-managed if the people working in it are abused. Port inspections should include safe and confidential ways for fishers to report abuse. Vessel licensing should be tied to labour protections.
RFMOs, often criticised for weaknesses in high seas fisheries governance, should stop treating labour as someone else’s responsibility. If RFMOs regulate access to fishing, they also have a role in ensuring that access is not built on coercion.
For companies and buyers, voluntary promises are no longer enough. Too often, seafood companies have invested more energy in tracing fish than in protecting the fishers whose labour brought that fish to market. Codes of conduct, certification schemes and audits can raise awareness, but they cannot replace binding accountability. Paperwork is not a substitute for protection. The real test is not whether consultants can produce a clean supply chain report. It is whether fishers are paid, safe, heard and able to leave abusive work without punishment.
For journalists and civil society, the challenge is about framing. Individual stories remain essential. They give the public a human face to a hidden crisis. But those stories should not end with a profile of the outlaw of the week. They should ask: what conditions made the abuse possible? Who profited from it? Which rules failed? Which markets rewarded it? Which inspection systems missed it?
Most importantly, fishers themselves must be placed at the centre of reform. Much more than just victims, they are workers, rights holders, organisers, knowledge holders and witnesses to the daily realities of the sea. Policies designed without their voices will continue to miss the structures and processes that shape their exploitation.
The seafood industry has spent years telling the world that sustainability matters. But sustainability does not stop at the waterline. It is not enough to protect fish while ignoring the people who catch them. It is not enough to celebrate responsible seafood while tolerating stolen wages, fear, injury and abandonment.
The next time a labour abuse story emerges from a fishing vessel, we should not treat it as an isolated tragedy. We should treat it as evidence of a wider system that has resisted change.
Read More »‘Challenge is implementation’ as global ocean summit hears big promises
Delegates pledged billions for marine protection, fisheries and climate action as Africa hosted the Our Ocean Conference for the first time.
On the shore near Mombasa, Kenya, as thousands of people discussed the future of the world’s oceans a few kilometres away, Joseph Ochieng Ouko was in the middle of another day at sea.
“Mimi ni mbaharia,” he says in Kiswahili, East Africa’s most widely spoken language: “I am a man of the ocean.”
The language blends Bantu roots with Arabic influence, owing to centuries of Indian Ocean trade – “Kiswahili” comes from the Arabic sawāḥilī (of the coast).
For 20 years, Ouko has made a living catching fish, octopus and other marine species along this coast. The ocean that sustains him and his family today, he says, is not the same one he first ventured into.
“The ocean has changed,” he says. “Sometimes the water levels rise, and the fish disappear. When conditions are good, certain types of fish return … fish are not as plentiful as they were in the past.”
These changes have been accompanied by a growing number of regulations. For example, officials inspecting fishing nets and stipulating larger mesh sizes to save juvenile fish from the catch.
This coast hosted more than 5,000 people from governments, businesses, civil society organisations and research institutions earlier this month, for the Our Ocean Conference. It marked the first time the ocean sustainability meeting has taken place in Africa.
Ouko understands the need to protect the ocean. But he says his community has needs, too. Asked what his message would be for delegates attending the nearby conference, Ouko does not hesitate: “As we continue working to better protect this ocean, they should also support us by providing modern fishing technology.”
A first for Africa
Ouko’s words zero in on a question that hovered over the conference: what does a global ocean gathering actually mean for the people whose livelihoods depend on the sea?
By the time Our Ocean 2026 (OOC11) concluded, 104 governments, companies and organisations had announced a total of 320 commitments. They were claimed to be worth a combined USD 6.4 billion, for marine protection, fisheries, pollution mitigation, action on climate change, maritime security and blue economy initiatives. Kenya alone announced USD 1 billion in commitments, including electronic monitoring for industrial fishing boats in its waters and protected ocean areas. The World Bank also pledged USD 1 billion, to support blue economies in developing countries across two years.
Those commitments are sorely needed, according to many scientists.
Marine researcher David Obura has been working on an update to the red list of endangered species, with a focus on corals. At OOC11, he explained how “almost half” of all coral species are threatened with extinction.
Obura – also the current chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – warned that climate change is already reshaping marine ecosystems. And these ecosystems support food production, coastal protection and local economies: “Our lives depend on them.”
Many African fisheries remain under pressure from overfishing, weak management systems, and inadequate data collection, according to the latest State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (Sofia) report. The report, launched during the conference, is compiled by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“In some areas, more than half of the fish stocks are overfished,” Manuel Barange, the FAO’s assistant director-general for fisheries and aquaculture, told Dialogue Earth.
‘We just have to do the work’
One attempt to address the challenge of overfishing that sprang forth from OOC11 was the Mombasa Declaration. Signed by 16 countries, it is a commitment to improve transparency in fisheries governance, and to strengthen efforts against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The Mombasa Declaration calls for greater access to information on fishing vessels, ownership structures, licensing systems and fishing activity.
Speaking during the declaration’s launch, the director of the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency, Ryan Orgera, said: “If we do not know who is fishing what, where, when and how, we will never be able to tackle illegal fishing.”
Ghana’s fisheries minister, Emelia Arthur, described transparency as a prerequisite for sustainable fisheries, adding: “Fisheries is nutrition, fisheries is food security, fisheries is livelihoods, fisheries is national security.”
Arthur outlined reforms Ghana has already introduced, including publication requirements for vessel licences, beneficial ownership disclosure and stricter monitoring systems. “The tools exist already, we just have to do the work,” she said.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) featured prominently during OOC11, with many governments promoting them as a preferred tool. MPAs restrict human activity to varying degrees, which is essential to achieving the global goal of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030.
But speakers at the conference cautioned against viewing MPAs as a silver bullet. The need for MPAs to be carefully enforced and led locally was also stated repeatedly. Studies have shown that a large proportion of MPAs exist only on paper, with little on-the-water enforcement of regulations or real protection delivered to the environment.
“An MPA that is not properly monitored becomes just a paper MPA,” warned Barange.
Mangrove restoration, seagrass protection and other current initiatives to lock up carbon in the ocean were all touted as wins at the conference. But without restrictions on the carbon dioxide emissions that fuel global warming, such initiatives are buying time rather than a sustainable future.
“The solution is cutting emissions,” Angelique Poupouneau, lead ocean negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, told Dialogue Earth at the conference. “It cannot be possible that you love the ocean and yet cannot curb your greenhouse gas emissions.”
The hard part
If there was a thread running through the conference, it was the growing impatience with empty promises.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Moses Vilakati, who heads the African Union’s Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment department, distilled this thread: “Our challenge is implementation.”
The challenge is whether conferences like Our Ocean can actually achieve this.
That message resurfaced again and again. The former US special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, called for OOC11 to be “remembered as the conference that moved the world from commitments to implementation”. Kenya’s cabinet secretary for mining and the blue economy, Hassan Ali Joho, said: “this conference is about turning words into commitments, commitments into action, and action into a legacy we can be proud of.”
The conference introduced a new commitments tracker, intended to strengthen accountability. As of the close of OOC11, it listed 3,251 commitments: 39% complete, 44% in progress, and 17% not started.
Some delegates said true success must not be measured by the billions of dollars in pledges but in healthier fisheries, better-managed MPAs, and ocean communities being able to point to tangible improvements in their daily lives.
At an OOC11 side event on community-led marine protection, Amina, an Indigenous representative from Lamu on Kenya’s northern coast, echoed the concerns of Ouko:
“Our children are looking for jobs and can’t find them. We need as much assistance as we can get. We don’t have the right gear to catch fish in the ocean. That’s why my community has sent me here.”
Neither Ouko nor Amina spoke in the lingo of international conferences – of stakeholders, breakout sessions, plenaries, road maps and implementation frameworks. But they both understand, with the clarity of lived experience, what is at stake for millions of people.
As per the Kiswahili phrase, wanaotegemea bahari kwa riziki yao, those millions depend on the ocean for their livelihoods.
Monday, July 6, 2026
China has planted so many trees it's changed the entire country's water distribution
By Sascha Pare, published
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