Investigating labor abuse and illegal shark-finning leads to U.S. sanctions on Chinese fishing fleets

27 Oct 2025

In 2021, Mongabay, in collaboration with Japanese investigative outlet Tansa and the Environmental Reporting Collective published an in-depth investigation of labor abuses aboard vessels operated by a major Chinese tuna fishing company. Drawing on extensive interviews with Indonesian deckhands and experts, the reporting uncovered allegations of forced labor, inhumane working conditions, and a pattern of unexplained deaths of migrant workers on the high seas.

After one of the company’s vessels made international headlines for abusing its workers and finning sharks, the reporting team sought to determine whether that was an isolated case or part of a wider pattern. In the year before publication, the team interviewed 16 Indonesians from 12 of the company’s boats. They also obtained interviews from the Environmental Justice Foundation, a London-based nonprofit that investigates the fishing industry, with 11 more Indonesians from six additional vessels providing testimony.

The interviewed crew members provided an overall account of conditions on more than half of the firm’s known 35 longline boats (large vessels that practice a commercial fishing technique employing thousands of baited hooks). These accounts, from men who worked between 2018 and 2020, revealed a comprehensive picture of an illegal shark fishing and finning operation that had taken place not just on one boat, but across the fleet of a corporation valued at nearly $700 million in 2018.

The investigation revealed for the first time that the abuses experienced by workers on one of the company’s vessels — most commonly, being given substandard food, possibly dangerous drinking water and being made to work excessively — were not limited to one boat, but widespread and systematic across the fleet. China has the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet, and Indonesia is widely believed to be the industry’s biggest supplier of labor. In 2019 and 2020, at least 30 fishers from Indonesia died on Chinese long-haul fishing boats.

In 2022, Mongabay published a follow-up investigation revealing that the same company was engaged in illegal shark-finning on an industrial scale. This second story grew out of continued conversations with the fishers featured in the original report. Their firsthand accounts were essential for reconstructing catch data at the heart of the report. Reporters found that its vessels used banned fishing gear to deliberately catch sharks in international waters on such a massive scale that the shark catch for the entire country of China may have been undercounted for years. This is likely the first-ever exposé – journalistic or otherwise – of an industrial-scale shark finning operation taking place across an entire fleet.

The Long Xing 621, one of the company’s boats, hauls up a shark in the Atlantic Ocean. The photo was taken by the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, which encountered the vessel during an expedition in September 2019. Image by Tommy Trenchard/Greenpeace.
The Long Xing 621, one of the company’s boats, hauls up a shark in the Atlantic Ocean. The photo was taken by the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, which encountered the vessel during an expedition in September 2019. Image by Tommy Trenchard/Greenpeace.

Impact

For example, just five of the company’s boats harvested roughly 5.1 metric tons of dried shark fin in the western Pacific Ocean in 2019. Using a methodology that converts the weight of dried fins into whole sharks, this estimate represented a larger catch than China reported for the entire longline fleet in the same region. Conservationists who reviewed the findings called this a “disaster” for efforts to protect large sharks, which are in rapid decline.

These two investigations focused on human rights abuses and environmental crimes provided a rare look  inside secretive fishing operations that can exploit workers and marine ecosystems if left unchecked.

Backed by rigorous cross-border reporting, these reports contributed to a significant real-world response. In December 2022, shortly after Mongabay published the shark finning investigation, the United States Government announced sanctions against the Chinese company at the center of the reporting, including its founder and largest shareholder.

The official announcement from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control included information exclusive to Mongabay’s reporting. The sanctions were part of a broader effort targeting individuals and companies involved in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and human rights abuses at sea.

In the same year that the first investigation won an Excellence in Investigative Reporting award from the Society of Publishers in Asia (2022), the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) also banned two fishing devices – wire leaders and ‘shark lines’ – that have proven devastatingly effective at catching huge numbers of sharks. A U.S. official later informed Mongabay that data from the investigation was used to make the case for the ban during the lead up to that summit.

This case shows how independent environmental journalism can expose abuses that transcend borders and inform global action. By connecting labor exploitation and ecological harm across the seafood supply chain, Mongabay’s investigations prompted a significant international response to human rights and environmental abuses at sea.

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Banner image: Yudha Pratama, a deckhand on one of the tuna fishing company’s boats Mongabay interviewed in August 2021. Image by Febriansyah for Mongabay.