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An Exhausted Ocean

We need to end the subsidies that drive overfishing. So much is on the line.

Imagine: You’re in the not-so-distant future. Overfishing, already the greatest threat to marine biodiversity in the 2020s, has only intensified due to a lack of action by world leaders. Fishers’ catches, declining since the 1990s, have continued to fall. Coastal communities are struggling more than ever. Billions of people depending on seafood for protein have seen an essential food source shrink. Many fishers and workers who relied on fisheries as their main source of income are challenged with finding alternative livelihoods. Our ocean is becoming emptier each day as previously awe-inspiring ecosystems falter.

Today, we are already running out of time. Our fisheries are in crisis. An ocean gasping for life could easily be our future. But it doesn’t have to be.

Members of the World Trade Organization have a chance to make a real, tangible difference by successfully reeling in a strong deal to tackle harmful fisheries subsidies this year. The ocean is in trouble. But the latest research shows that ending all harmful fisheries subsidies could restore 35 million tonnes of fish to the ocean—four times what North America consumes in a year—by 2050. 

To bring the stakes of an agreement into sharp relief, famous photographers from around the globe picture what might be if the World Trade Organization doesn't take action now. 



Shawn Heinrichs

Cabo Pulmo National Park, Baja California Sur, Mexico (2020)

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Divers come from around the world to experience the vibrant marine life in Mexico’s Cabo Pulmo National Park. Years ago, this very spot was largely depleted due to overfishing and habitat loss. But when the community and conservation partners joined together to protect this coastal area, fish stocks rebounded. A true conservation success story, now both nature and local communities benefit from sustainable practices. Unfortunately, most of the ocean remains at risk, and sites just outside of this protected space could soon become desolate. This just shows, however, the impact and opportunities gained from acting together to tackle risks to ocean health—like harmful fisheries subsidies.

Baja California Sur, Mexico (2021)

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Mobula rays gather by the hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands in the nutrient-rich waters off Baja California Sur. Like their cousins the manta rays, mobula rays live long, mature slowly, and birth just one pup every few years, making them very vulnerable to overexploitation. Their populations continue to decline steeply across the globe, as vast numbers are caught in gill nets and longline fisheries, many of which are heavily subsidized. In Mexico, like in many places around the world, fisheries subsidies have led to larger fleets but reduced productivity, as overfishing causes catches to decline alongside fish populations.

Shawn is an Emmy Award winning cinematographer, an acclaimed photographer, and a passionate conservationist. A co-founder of SeaLegacy, he has become a major force in the global movement to protect threatened marine species and habitats. Fueled by his passion for the oceans, his groundbreaking work fuses dramatic imagery with intimate and thought-provoking stories, to connect the global community to the beauty and vulnerability of threatened marine species and habitats. Shawn is a United Nations ‘Wild For Life’ Champion, serves on the International Board of WildAid, is a Director of Manta Trust, a Safina Fellow, and an iLCP Fellow.

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Shawn Heinrichs

Jody MacDonald

Sumbawa, Indonesia (2009)

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Two women carry a basket of small, freshly caught fish to sell at the local market in Lakey, Sumbawa, Indonesia. Small-scale fishers account for 89% of Indonesia’s fisheries output, yet they are also among the poorest communities in the country. Already highly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming and land-based pollution, overfishing and illegal fishing further strain the country’s fishing sector, threatening Indonesians’ livelihoods and food security. To protect coastal communities across the globe, leaders must ensure that the drivers of overfishing, like harmful subsidies, are addressed.

Madagascar (2010)

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Vezo fishers present their early morning catch. In Malagasy, the local language, Vezo literally means the people who fish. For the past 2,000 years, they have been navigating the stretch of Indian Ocean separating Madagascar from the African continent in hand-carved pirogues like the one seen here. In recent years, commercialized fishing has shifted local economies from a barter system to a cash-based competitive market, and huge, often subsidized trawlers from foreign nations have decimated the shoals that sustain the Vezos’ ancient lifestyle. As subsidies continue to incentivize unsustainable fishing, Vezo migration and identity are under threat.

Madagascar (2010)

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A young Vezo fisherman wrestles with an octopus stuck to his arm in warm Indian Ocean waters off the Madagascar coast. Octopi are critical to the economy of his small fishing community. A switch to fishing commercially has pressed the Vezo people to catch more than what is sustainable, imperilling the area’s unique marine environment of coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass beds. In 2004, local leaders introduced self-imposed rules, allowing the octopus population to bounce back. This success inspired other fishing villages—however, to maintain progress, sustainability and economic incentives such as subsidies must align, including for distant fleets whose fishing affects the same ecosystem.

An award-winning photographer, Jody MacDonald is no stranger to adventure and exploration in the last untamed corners of the planet. Having spent her formative years in Saudi Arabia before sailing around the world twice over the span of a decade on a kiteboarding, sailing, surfing and paragliding expedition onboard a 60ft catamaran, she has traveled to over 100 countries in search of the unknown. From train hopping in the Sahara to paragliding in the Himalayas at 17,000 ft, she is passionate about stepping off the beaten path in pursuit of documenting issues that blend insightful storytelling, big adventure expeditions, and social change inspiration in the hopes of promoting the preservation of wild places.

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Jody MacDonald

Sirachai Arunrugstichai

Outside the protected area of Mu Koh Lanta National Park, Krabi, Thailand (2015)

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At first light, thousands of fish are pulled toward the surface by fishers on a commercial purse seiner in the Andaman Sea, just outside of Thailand’s Mu Koh Lanta National Park. Since the subsidy-assisted explosion of industrial fisheries in the 1960s, catch per unit effort in the Andaman Sea has declined by over 75%. As fish populations continue to shrink, the thriving industry that allows Thailand to be among the world's largest seafood exporters will be increasingly impacted. Left unchecked, subsidies meant to help the fishing industry and those who rely on it can ultimately contribute to its collapse.

Kooddoo Atoll, Republic of Maldives (2017)

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A tourist dips her hand into a swarm of plankton attracted to the nighttime lights of the dive boat as they are devoured in huge gulps by a whale shark. The largest living fish, whale sharks are harmless to humans, and the tourism they bring to the Maldives and elsewhere provides substantial economic benefits to local communities. Unfortunately, demand for their fins has put them under severe pressure from overfishing. They also regularly become bycatch, getting tangled up in non-selective fishing nets—which in many areas are supplied to fishers by governments as a subsidy. Without action, these endangered gentle giants will face increasing pressure, threatening their future and the tourism that depends on them.

Koh Adang Island, Mu Koh Tarutao National Park, Satun, Thailand (2017)

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An Urak Lawoi diver in homemade diving equipment carries a fish trap as he runs along the bottom of the sea in Thailand’s Mu Koh Tarutao National Park. The Urak Lawoi are an Aboriginal Malay people who live in small communities along the southern Andaman coast of Thailand. Although the Urak Lawoi have adapted to the modern lifestyle as visitors flock to the Adang-Rawi Archipelago, they still heavily rely on small-scale fishing as their primary profession. If overfishing is allowed to continue unchecked, the entire way of life for these traditional fishers will be put at risk.

Sirachai “Shin” Arunrugstichai is an independent photojournalist, whose works focused on marine conservation issues. He is an Associate Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers, a talent from Southeast Asia of World Press Photo 6x6 Global Talent Program, and a storytelling grantee of National Geographic Society. He regularly works for conservation organizations, including IUCN, Save Our Seas Foundation, WildAid and Greenpeace, and covers news for Getty Images as a stringer. Shin’s photos were published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian and National Geographic, and others.

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Sirachai Arunrugstichai

Sumer Verma

Galápagos Islands (2019)

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A massive, spellbinding ball of dogtooth tuna completely surrounds the photographer during a frigidly cold morning dive in the Galápagos Islands. Although the shallow, nutrient-rich sea that the tuna call home is protected, industrial foreign fishing fleets, many bolstered by subsidies, lurk at the edge of the reserve’s territorial waters. Artisanal fishers in the area are already making increasingly longer trips for a smaller catch. Conservationists have been sounding the alarm, saying that unprecedented pressure from overfishing now threatens marine life in the world-renowned archipelago.

Sumer is an underwater photographer and cinematographer from India. He is based between Bombay and the Andaman & Nicobar islands. A passionate ocean advocate, he uses his photography to raise awareness about the oceans and the threats they are facing.

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Sumer Verma

Yuyang Liu

Joal-Fadiout, Senegal (2016)

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Senegalese fishermen enjoy roasted fish for dinner on their boat. As many stocks continue to decline due to overfishing, West African artisanal fishers have to drive further and further from shore to get enough fish for sale or face coming back empty handed. This can be largely attributed to the influx of often subsidy-fuelled industrial fleets from other countries into their waters. If these harmful subsidies continue and, with them, the intense overfishing depleting West Africa’s waters, food and livelihood security will continue to deteriorate, and many fishers may be forced to abandon tradition and find other ways to support their communities.

Yuyang Liu, born in 1991, is based in Chengdu, China currently. He is a jury of ADC Awards in the photography section, had been selected as Nine Chinese Photographers You Need to Follow by TIME and emerging photographer of PDN 30 in 2017. He also won Magnum Foundation Human Rights and Photography Fellowship, Ian Parry Scholarship, and Abigail Cohen Fellowship in Documentary Photography, etc. His work has been exhibited in New York, London, Shanghai, Paris, Berlin, etc. His publication clients include TIME, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Science, The Lancet, etc., he also collaborates with NGOs.

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Yuyang Liu/Greenpeace