For decades, the owners of refrigerated container ships, or reefers, often associated with illegal fishing, have remained in the shadows. Now, a new study has traced 324 companies as the owners of 569 reefer vessels active between 2017 and 2022, identifying the people and countries behind these ships for the first time. Reefers are used as floating storage for fishing fleets across the world’s high seas. These ships stay out at sea for several months, allowing catches to be off-loaded far from ports. The setup cuts fuel use by keeping fishing boats out longer, but experts warn it also enables the fishing industry to sidestep regulations, with reports linking reefers to not only illegal fishing but also severe human rights abuses, including forced labor. “A vessel is just a piece of steel,” the study’s lead author Frida Bengtsson, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, told Mongabay by phone. “These are companies and people making decisions. Knowing who owns the ships is a starting point for addressing concerns.” Bengtsson’s research found that almost half of the vessels are owned by companies based in Russia (26%) and China (20%), while other major owners are in Greece, Japan and South Korea. The study also found that many of these companies registered their vessels in countries other than their own and operated under foreign flags, called flags of convenience. For example, of the 48 Greek-owned reefers the researchers examined, none flew Greece flags. Instead, 33 were flagged to Panama, six to Russia and…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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