Original subtitles

♪ ♪

PETER HAMMERSTEDT: We have to do this

under the cover of darkness.

There could be eyes watching us.

It's only through a stealth mission, really,

that we'll have any success

intercepting an illegal operator.

MARIANA VAN ZELLER: I'm on the trail

of what some consider the perfect crime.

A black market worth more than $20 billion,

with little risk of getting caught.

I'm told it's like robbing a bank

in the middle of the ocean.

So you see these lights out there on the ocean,

those are the six super trawlers.

PETER: One of the reasons that we're all black

is so that these super trawlers

don’t see that a patrol is under way,

that they don’t see us leaving the harbor.

MARIANA: Somewhere out there in the darkness

are the most prolific wildlife poachers on the planet.

Who are they? How do they work?

And why is it so hard to stop them?

I thought I knew black markets,

but I’ve never seen anything like this.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

PETER: In this mass expanse of water,

we're looking for ships

that are doing everything that they can to hide.

♪ ♪

MARIANA: I've come to Liberia

to understand how illegal fishing works.

PETER: These trawlers come in direct conflict

with the local fishermen,

because they're literally stealing fish

from the local communities here.

MARIANA: Some countries have the resources

to protect their own waters from poachers;

others don’t.

That's why Liberia has enlisted the help

of an international organization called Sea Shepherd.

On board are a 30‐person crew, the Liberian Coast Guard

and my guide to this joint patrol,

20‐year Sea Shepherd veteran Peter Hammerstedt.

Peter currently heads

Sea Shepherd’s task force in Africa,

a region plagued by overfishing.

What’s causing the overfishing?

PETER: You have a European fleet

that's at a massive overcapacity,

two and a half times what it could sustainably fish

in European waters.

You have a Chinese distant water fishing fleet

that has essentially wiped out fisheries off the coast of China

and that is now seeking waters to fish elsewhere.

And these two massive fishing fleets

from Europe, from China,

have congregated in areas

where, historically, there still has been fish.

Places like West Africa.

MARIANA: There's no global framework

that governs what is legal in the fishing industry.

That’s a huge part of the problem.

And in places like West Africa,

foreign trawlers can take advantage of patchy regulation,

poor enforcement

and the rampant corruption of some local officials.

It's a low‐risk, high‐reward crime,

but the Sea Shepherd is trying to change that.

PETER: Six miles offshore, no industrial vessels

are allowed inside of an inshore exclusion zone.

But when there's no patrolling presence at sea,

these trawlers routinely turn off their location transponders,

and they go in.

MARIANA: Every large commercial fishing vessel is equipped

with an Automatic Identification System, or AIS,

which transmits its position at sea.

If I were to be fishing illegal

inside the exclusion zones,

as a captain of a ship, I would turn off the AIS?

PETER: You’d get close to the prohibited area.

That’s when you would turn your AIS off.

And you wouldn't reappear on AIS

until you’ve left that prohibited area.

MARIANA: In order to directly observe

suspicious fishing vessels,

we need to get closer to them and avoid being detected.

That means we wait for the cover of nightfall again.

♪ ♪

WOMAN: So these are the vessels that we are looking at.

At the moment they are about three miles away from us.

MARIANA: We’re super close to this trawler, right?

WOMAN: At the moment, yes. We can see them.

MARIANA: Oh, you can actually see them?

PETER: Yeah.

MARIANA: Oh, it’s that, what, light over there.

WOMAN: Yes.

MARIANA: So that’s the boat we're going after?

WOMAN: Yes.

MARIANA: The Sea Shepherd crew has found and identified

a trawler with a known history of turning off its AIS.

What have you guys been able to find out about this boat?

PETER: There's not that much known about this vessel,

which is suspicious in and of itself.

We know that this vessel has a long history of dark periods,

where they turn off their location transponder.

And we know that they've done some suspicious identity changes

in, especially, claiming to be a Somali vessel,

as soon as a month and a half ago.

Uh, this is a vessel

that we think is most likely flagged to Senegal,

but with a beneficial owner that’s in Spain.

MARIANA: Peter has a long history with the Spanish.

Back in the early 2000s,

one out of every three fish in the Antarctic

was being caught illegally...

most by Spanish‐owned vessels.

Some were brought to justice, but six trawlers kept at it,

evading authorities by changing their colors,

their flags and even their names.

They were known as the Bandit 6.

The most notorious, a vessel that made millions

poaching Chilean sea bass, was known as the Thunder.

And Peter helped bring it down.

PETER: We found the Thunder fishing in a CCAMLR region.

They’re not licensed to fish down here.

There’s an Interpol Purple Notice issued for this vessel.

We've told the vessel that they're under arrest

and we've told them to go to Fremantle, Australia.

We saw this vessel emerge out of the fog.

PETER: That would begin what ultimately would become

the longest maritime pursuit in history.

The chase stretched across three oceans,

covering 11,000 nautical miles, and covered 110 days.

(ship horn blowing)

MARIANA: And then in the end what happened?

PETER: Ultimately, unable to shake us as the pursuers,

the captain of the Thunder decided to sink his own ship,

in an attempt to destroy the evidence on board.

MARIANA: Were they able to?

PETER: As they abandoned the ship,

three of my crew boarded the vessel with cameras.

They were able to seize nautical charts, mobile phones,

computer hard drives,

evidence that was turned over to Interpol,

who then used that evidence to chase down the owner.

She’s going down.

MARIANA: Although several crew members of the Thunder

were sent to prison,

the shipowner, like the owners of the other Bandit 6 vessels,

remained free.

And Peter is confident that many of those same players

are still active in the illegal fishing game today.

WOMAN: At the moment, they cannot see us.

They can probably see a very small red light,

but not able to ID what we are.

PETER: And we've also reduced the speed,

so we're matching their speed of about three knots,

which is a speed indicative of fishing.

So if they're just looking at us on radar,

they’re going to think that we’re another trawler.

MARIANA: Mmm.

So it's the perfect way to approach a situation like this,

for a covert mission like this one, I guess?

PETER: The perfect way to surprise a fishing boat

is to pretend that you are a fishing boat.

MARIANA: Hmm.

PETER: The plan tonight

is that we’ll be assisting the Liberian Coast Guard.

Kanbal III claims to be a shrimp trawler

but may be doing something very, very different.

MARIANA: In 2017,

the Kanbal III was approached by another joint patrol,

conducted by Senegalese fishing authorities and Greenpeace.

For more than 20 minutes, Kanbal III's captain

ignored radio requests to slow down

and to allow inspection.

(man shouting)

MARIANA: Once the Senegalese authorities finally boarded,

they discovered Kanbal III's nets

had been manipulated to create a smaller mesh size,

thereby capturing more fish.

This is illegal in most of the world.

They also discovered that the crew

had attempted to undo their net modifications

prior to inspection.

(man shouting)

MARIANA: How dangerous are these operations?

WOMAN: What we are doing carries some risks.

But we have the Liberian Coast Guard with us.

We have a trained crew, and that’s what we are here for.

(radio chatter)

MARIANA: Being in a small boat on the open ocean at night

is an unnerving experience.

It's cold, you can't see a thing,

and you’re surrounded on all sides by deep, dark water.

♪ ♪

It’s scary.

You feel small and helpless.

♪ ♪

As we get closer to the Kanbal III,

I’m struck by the danger of what we’re about to do.

(man speaking foreign language)

MARIANA: Not only are we attempting to board a ship

in the open ocean at night,

but we have no idea what or who we'll find on board.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(officer shouting)

MARIANA: I'm with the crew of the Sea Shepherd

and the Liberian Coast Guard

as they board a fishing trawler called the Kanbal III

that’s been exhibiting suspicious behavior.

♪ ♪

MARIANA: Pedro.

So, the captain is actually Portuguese.

I just saw his passport right here.

MARIANA: Certa.

MARIANA: Mm‐hmm.

MARIANA: Mm‐hmm.

He seems uncomfortable with my questions,

which makes me even more curious

about what might be found on the boat.

MARIANA: Okay.

We go over the ship’s documents,

and it looks like their license

allows them to trawl for shrimp and crab.

But the Liberian Coast Guard needs to see proof

that they’re fishing by the rules.

So they ask the captain to reel in the nets.

Oh, wow. So you can see the fish starting to come in.

They’re opening up the nets?

Oh, wow.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Okay, and this is essentially what they have

the actual license to be fishing right now,

is the shrimp.

I mean, I grew up eating this, you know,

this is called lagostim in Portugal.

I grew up eating this kind of shrimp.

PETER: Here the shrimp is maybe not even 1/10

of what the catch is, right?

And that's pretty typical of a shrimp fishery,

this enormous amount of bycatch.

MARIANA: Bycatch refers to the fish

or other marine species that are caught unintentionally

while fishing for a specific target.

In this case, shrimp.

To me, you know, looking at some of these

and knowing that each of these shrimp in Portugal

on a plate at a restaurant,

they can sell for about 20 euros each,

and you can see the amount of money that can be made,

not by these guys, but by the big bosses, right?

The people that are actually making the money from, you know,

thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars

that we’re seeing worth of shrimp on this boat.

PETER: And here these guys are making $150 a month.

This is not‐‐like, the economics of this does not trickle down.

MARIANA: It's an ugly reality,

but still no sign of illegal activity.

So, I make my way down to the cargo hold,

where the catch is frozen and kept.

So, it says cangrejos, crab; gamba, shrimp;

and, uh, captured in the Atlantic, so very, very vague.

And then heading towards Vigo, España,

and it says the importer...

yeah, which is a Spanish name.

Have you heard of this company?

WOMAN: Yeah, yeah. We've heard of them before.

Based in Vigo, which is a city in Galicia, a region of Spain.

PETER: You could tell the captain was a bit evasive.

He didn't want to say that the real ownership of the vessel

is in Spain.

There's Spanish language documents on the bridge,

there's documentation on the cartons of fish

that everything’s being exported to Spain.

To Vigo, Spain, which is Galicia,

which is really the heart of fishing in Spain, in particular.

MARIANA: And yet, despite Peter's suspicions,

there's no evidence of illegal activity.

PETER: Today the Liberian Coast Guard has to let this ship go.

MARIANA: So the nets of the Kanbal III

will soon be back in the water.

♪ ♪

I spent almost a week on the Sea Shepherd

and learned one of the great ironies of the fishing world‐‐

that despite the fact that almost 20% of our seafood

comes from the black market,

it’s nearly impossible to catch anyone red‐handed.

But I’m not giving up.

I'm determined to find my way

inside this world of illegal fishing.

PAUL WOODS: Yeah, this is the global footprint of fishing,

mostly industrial fishing.

MARIANA: That's all the green that I'm seeing right here,

all these little green squares?

PAUL: Yeah, each one of these

is an area where vessels are fishing.

MARIANA: Uh‐huh.

PAUL: There’s 50,000 vessels out there.

MARIANA: 50,000? PAUL: Doing, yeah.

MARIANA: Industrial, commercial?

PAUL: Yeah, just the big ones.

MARIANA: 50,000?

PAUL: Yeah, right. 50,000 vessels around the world.

MARIANA: Perhaps as much as 20% of seafood brought into the U. S.

comes from the black market.

Yet, I’m still searching for a way inside.

I’m hoping Paul Woods can point me in the right direction.

He's the co‐founder of Global Fishing Watch,

a non‐profit that uses state‐of‐the‐art data analysis

to monitor fishing vessels around the world.

So if you are doing illegal activities out at sea,

what are the chances you'll actually be caught, in general?

PAUL: In well‐regulated countries,

there’s a good chance you’ll get caught.

This is clear because the U. S. is good at managing.

In Hawaii there’s lots of fish out here,

but they, uh, the, you know, the U. S. Navy keeps them out.

Whereas, uh, in Africa, in West Africa,

all the foreign fleets, Spain and China, Korea, Japan,

and the United States, you know,

they all just fish in there,

and they're not, they don't keep them out,

because they’re not good at keeping them out.

We've had issues where we've seen vessels on the map

doing something we know is illegal,

we report it to the authorities, and we tell them,

"This vessel is fishing in your waters,

it’s not on your registry list, it's clearly illegal,"

and then we find out

that they were retroactively granted a license to fish.

So this happens routinely.

MARIANA: Hmm. And why do you think that is?

PAUL: Uh, well, because there's, there's money to be made

in, uh, fishing and, uh, licensing fishing.

You know, and that is, you know, more powerful

than the need to keep the fishery sustainable.

MARIANA: How frustrating is it for you?

PAUL: Uh, it’s, it’s pretty frustrating.

What you need is for the fishers to know

that eventually, even if they're not caught in the act,

they’re going to, you know, face consequences

for breaking the rules.

MARIANA: But right now, that’s not happening.

In fact, the criminals are using

the globalized nature of the industry to their advantage.

PAUL: The vessel fishes in one country,

it lands the catch in another country,

it's flagged in a third country,

and it’s owned by someone in a fourth country,

and that’s where all the money goes.

So how can you even police it?

There's four countries involved that all have to cooperate

in order to actually create consequences for that owner

for their illegal actions that happen on the water.

MARIANA: That's why some shipowners take advantage

of what's called "flags of convenience."

They register their vessel in a foreign country

with limited oversight,

often as a way to skirt regulations at home

or avoid detection abroad.

PAUL: It’s a global supply chain.

Everything gets mingled and flows around.

So once, once it comes off the boat and goes into that,

it’s really hard to trace.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

MARIANA: The shrimp I saw on the Kanbal III

is bound for Vigo, Spain,

home to the largest fishing port in Europe.

Every year, more than 700,000 tons of catch

are offloaded here.

The fish are sorted, sold and distributed

to countries around the globe, including the U. S.

It’s a massive operation.

High‐tech, spotlessly clean, rigorously controlled.

Every crate of fish is weighed, catalogued, and barcoded,

so buyers know exactly when and where it was caught.

(speaking Spanish)

MARIANA: That’s the theory, anyway.

In reality, any one of the hundreds of species on sale here

could have been transferred at sea

from an illegal fishing vessel

to a vessel carrying the paperwork

to make its cargo look legitimate.

(speaking Spanish)

MARIANA: Once the contraband fish has been mixed

with a legal catch in a ship's freezers,

it’s impossible to tell them apart.

It's one common way that illegal seafood

gets laundered into the legal supply chain.

But I haven’t come to Spain for the fish.

I’ve come for the fishermen.

The ones that have given Galicia its rather notorious reputation.

PETER: Galicia has always been a smuggling portal for Europe.

They've been involved in trafficking not just of fish,

but of drugs and tobacco

and other illicit products as well.

The companies behind vessels involved in the poaching

of Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish,

they’re known as the Galician Mafia.

MARIANA: I want to find someone

who's worked on these illegal vessels

and knows the secrets of this dirty trade firsthand.

After asking around a bit, I meet a retired fisherman

who says he’ll give it to me straight.

♪ ♪

MARIANA: Perico is a retired fisherman.

He says he spent 35 years working on Spanish vessels

in the frigid North Atlantic.

Perico tells me that his career at sea

was marked by constant illegal activity.

MARIANA: Mm‐hmm.

MARIANA: But when I press Perico

for the names of the worst offenders, he clams up.

MARIANA: Mm‐hmm.

MARIANA: And there’s the rub.

Spanish fishing is, at its heart, a family business.

A very big family business that keeps its secrets close.

But then, a new lead.

Remember the Bandit 6?

One of which the Sea Shepherd chased for 110 days

before the captain purposely sank his boat?

Well, I was able to connect with a local journalist

who has access to a treasure trove of documents

relating to the investigation of those vessels

and the ensuing court case.

If I want to find a source

deeper in this illegal fishing world,

this could be my chance.

How does the fact that we're talking about these,

you know, very wealthy companies

with fleets of boats and fancy websites

and a lot of lawyers, how does that complicate matters for you

in terms of being a journalist and investigating this?

MAN: I have to be careful, and, uh...

MARIANA: Can you tell me a little bit

about what all these documents are?

MAN: Those documents are the outcome

of the, probably the best investigation

on illegal fishing.

8,000 pages.

MARIANA: 8,000 pages?

MAN: 8,000 pages.

The investigation was led by Interpol,

together with the Spanish Guardia Civil,

on the Bandit 6.

MARIANA: I mean, they were caught red‐handed.

There's plenty of evidence that they were,

what they were doing was illegal, right?

MAN: Everything is proved here, in all the documents,

that those Bandit 6 were committing crimes.

MARIANA: Incredibly, the Spanish Supreme Court

overturned the case against the shipowners of the Bandit 6.

They decided that,

while the Bandit 6 did commit illegal activity,

the courts did not have jurisdiction,

because those illegal acts occurred

in international waters.

MAN: Here, we have all the coordinators

of the fishing activities from Galicia.

MARIANA: Wow. So, these are the names and contacts?

MAN: Yeah. MARIANA: All the coordinators?

MAN: That’s it. That's it.

MARIANA: Wow, this is great.

MAN: And in this all documents,

you have all the phone numbers and some emails of those guys.

So you can try.

MARIANA: So they’ve all actually been indicted, these?

MAN: Yeah. We have the name of some offshore companies

used by those guys of the Bandit 6.

MARIANA: There’s evidence of money laundering in this one.

MAN: Yeah, no doubt about it.

MARIANA: And here you have the whole list

of the crewmen from this boat.

You have the captain, the chief engineer, the cook,

and then all the officers.

There’s phone numbers for this one, too.

Passport numbers, lots of photos, bank accounts.

There’s just so much here.

You see that the chief engineer and the officer and the captain

are all Spanish.

And there are Spanish numbers associated with them.

This is big‐‐

lists of names and numbers

of people directly involved in the Bandit 6

and who might know what illegal activities are still ongoing.

(phone ringing)

(beep beep beep)

MARIANA: Calling another person

that we know worked one of the Bandit 6 boats.

(beep beep beep)

MARIANA: He hung up.

MARIANA: Okay.

MAN: No, no, no, no, no. No, no.

(ringing)

MARIANA: Pick up, pick up, pick up.

MARIANA: Two and half hours now,

we’ve been making call after call.

(ringing)

¿Hola?

MARIANA: So, today, this afternoon, here in Vigo.

Great.

I finally secured a face‐to‐face meeting

with a former crew member from a Bandit 6 fishing boat.

He’s texted me a location on the outskirts of the city.

I think this is it.

Okay, here we are.

♪ ♪

I think it’s here.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

¿Hola?

♪ ♪

¿Hola?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

MARIANA: The man I'm talking to‐‐

we’ll call him Luis‐‐

spent time working on one of the Bandit 6 boats,

as well as dozens of other Spanish vessels

throughout his career.

He's my key to understanding how illegal fishing works

at an international level.

MARIANA: Wow.

MARIANA: We have no knowledge that any of the ships we boarded

had double bottoms or illegal nets.

But it sounds like that was standard operating procedure

on the Spanish ships that Luis worked on.

And that wasn’t the only way they skirted regulations.

MARIANA: Mm‐hmm.

MARIANA: Mm‐hmm.

Luis explains that within the fishing industry,

it’s the shipowners who have the power to make change.

But those are the same folks

who are profiting the most off the status quo.

MARIANA: He’s right.

The real issue is not the need

for more regulations or enforcement.

It’s our relationship to the oceans themselves.

I've been so focused on trying to understand the black market‐‐

boat owners exploiting

a disorganized international system,

fishermen using altered nets,

captains turning off AIS trackers‐‐

that I’ve overlooked the obvious.

A bigger, more devastating truth about industrial fishing.

SYLVIA EARLE: The impact of illegal fishing is enormous,

but it is relatively small

compared to the impact of legal fishing.

MARIANA: Sylvia Earle is an oceanographer

and the founder of Mission Blue,

a non‐profit dedicated to protecting our oceans.

She doesn't mince words when it comes to her opinions

about the global fishing industry.

SYLVIA: This is the biggest wildlife trade on the planet.

We’re waging war on the ocean.

And we're doing it with a big smile on our face,

thinking, "This is great. We have technologies now

that can go to places we couldn't go before,

finding fish that were not accessible before."

MARIANA: Her words echo so much of what I've seen

over the last few months.

PETER: Shrimp is maybe not even 1/10

of what the catch is, right?

And that's pretty typical of a shrimp fishery,

this enormous amount of bycatch.

I, I always refer to bycatch

as the invisible victims of industrial fishing.

MARIANA: The invisible victims of industrial fishing.

In other words, a waste of animal life

like I’ve never seen before.

It's difficult to watch and even harder to fathom

that it's all legal, happening every day and night

on trawlers around the globe.

NEWS ANCHOR: The stocks of tropical tuna

in the Indian Ocean have been overfished.

NEWS ANCHOR: Human exploitation of the world's oceans

is passing the point of no return.

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NEWS ANCHOR: A huge wealth of creatures and habitats

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PAUL: Industrial and commercial fishing is scaled up so much

that it really is a lot more like mining than fishing.

These nets are enormous.

And they just take everything.

All the fish within a kilometer out of the water all at once.

You’re literally mining the ocean of fish, of all life.

SYLVIA: We have the capacity to deplete wildlife

on a scale that is unprecedented.

Technology is available to almost everyone everywhere

to find, capture, consume, or market ocean wildlife

on a scale that is simply,

no matter how you want to measure it,

it’s not sustainable.

MARIANA: It’s this future that has me worried.

But even today, there are plenty of warning signs

if you know where to look.

The experts I spoke with pointed me to the coast of Ghana,

where a local fishing community has been transformed

in ways I’m told I won’t believe.

♪ ♪

(beep) (woman shouts)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

MARIANA: We got a call late last night

saying to be at the port at 5 a. m. this morning

because they had something that they wanted to show us.

Um...

we're still not sure what we'll be able to film or see,

but all we know is that we're meeting this person

in about five minutes.

The call came from a local fisherman turned crime boss

who's known simply as the Chairman.

I was introduced to him by a contact of mine,

but the Chairman has been difficult to pin down.

I see a couple of boats with lights here.

People working inside. Let's check.

(unbuckles seatbelt)

(car door slams)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Over here?

♪ ♪

(man talking)

MARIANA: Is this it?

(man talking)

MARIANA: I guess this is it.

Yeah, come in?

Looks like that’s the Chairman on the phone.

His name is Justice.

MARIANA: Yeah, very fast. We're very fast.

Okay, we have to go, guys!

♪ ♪

We pass by one fishing boat

that strangely doesn’t have any fishing gear.

They are clearly unhappy about our cameras.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

This is one of the boats that came out from sea today?

Can we stop there and talk to them?

It’s another fishing boat, again with no fishing gear.

♪ ♪

MARIANA: Oh, wow.

Look at that.

It’s all big blocks of frozen fish.

So the whole boat is fill, is all full of that?

CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MARIANA: These Ghanaians used to fish for themselves,

but an influx of foreign trawlers

has caused fish stocks to plummet.

So, now, in a perverse twist of their livelihood,

these fishermen go out to sea and buy blocks of fish

that have been caught and frozen by the trawlers themselves.

This came out from the sea?

CHAIRMAN: Yeah.

MARIANA: From the trawlers? CHAIRMAN: Yeah.

MARIANA: Yeah.

So they would throw it away, and instead...

CHAIRMAN: Yeah.

MARIANA: ...the fishermen go out and pick it.

CHAIRMAN: Yeah.

MARIANA: How far are the Chinese vessels?

CHAIRMAN: 12 hours.

MARIANA: 12 hours to get there?

Through forces beyond his control,

the Chairman has been dragged into an illegal seafood trade

known as Saiko.

You have been working as a fisherman

for a very long time.

MARIANA: You’re originally an artisanal fisher.

CHAIRMAN: Yeah, yeah.

MARIANA: And so, since this is illegal,

why did you agree to talk to us?

CHAIRMAN: Well...

MARIANA: It’s not.

MARIANA: Right, that it helps a lot of people.

CHAIRMAN: Yeah.

MARIANA: So, what do you say to people

who say what the trawlers are doing

is that they are destroying the oceans,

they're killing all this fish,

and you are contributing to that

because you are buying this bycatch?

MARIANA: Right.

MARIANA: Right.

MARIANA: The reality is even more depressing.

What started out as foreign trawlers selling their bycatch

has become so established and so profitable

that many foreign ships

are now purposely targeting local fish, which, of course,

has only made the overfishing problem worse.

This is the trickle‐down effect of our global fishing industry‐‐

a local population so powerless to stop the overfishing

that it’s now been forced to embrace a black market.

(crowd murmur)

Oh, wow. So, this is all the...

CHAIRMAN: Yes. Yeah.

This is the Saiko fish.

MARIANA: Another one there.

Make no mistake about what you’re looking at here.

This is a fishing town that now survives on frozen fish.

I mean, it’s incredible.

You look around, and all of it is basically Saiko.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

You can see, it's just boat after boat,

and all of them are filled with fish,

and they’re bringing all the fish now to shore.

They cover it with blankets to keep it cold, to keep it frozen.

Oh, wow! Look at that!

Holy (bleep).

That is insane!

So much.

So you can see how big this boat is.

CHAIRMAN: Yeah, yeah.

MARIANA: And then every single one of these, basically, holds,

is filled, filled, filled with frozen fish.

CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MARIANA: Yeah, it’s out. It's open.

♪ ♪

PAUL: We can’t do this forever.

There will come a point where we don’t have fish.

And the people that will suffer

are the people that go out to fish every day

to feed their families.

But it won't be the owners of the companies

that took all the fish.

They’ll just go do something else.

MARIANA: I'm almost embarrassed to admit how blind I've been

to the ugly truth about our global fishing industry.

But I can’t unsee what I’ve seen on this journey.

The industry needs to change.

We all do.

SYLVIA: Taking wild animals from the ocean

and turning it into money or products...

there’s a cost.

There’s a cost to everyone.

It’s not free.

♪ ♪

Captioned by Side Door Media Services