The blue economy's hidden catch: unmasking the threat of illegal fishing

Masayuki Agawa / Ocean Image Bank

Illegal fishing and opaque ownership structures challenge the integrity of sustainable ocean economies.

As momentum grows around the vision of a sustainable blue economy - one that promises prosperity, resilience, and inclusive growth - there is a quieter, unresolved question beneath the surface - what happens when the very resources this vision depends on are being extracted illegally, and often invisibly?

At the Third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in Nice, leaders will discuss innovation, investment, and inclusive governance. Yet a critical element remains largely underexplored - the role of illegal fishing and associated crimes in shaping, distorting, or even hollowing out the economic and governance structures we seek to strengthen.

Rather than a technical problem or policy gap, illegal fishing exposes deeper tensions in global ocean governance  between visibility and concealment, growth and control, national sovereignty and global trade. Africa, where these tensions are especially acute, offers both a warning and a window into what’s at stake. The continent is estimated to lose USD 11.5 billion annually to illegal fishing. In West Africa, estimates suggest that nearly 4 in 10 fish may be caught illegally. This is not simply about weak enforcement or regulatory gaps. It reflects something more structural: an entrenched imbalance of power, a crisis of accountability, and a system where opaque ownership and distant decision-making diminish the ability of coastal states to exercise full control over their resources.

A recent global study by EqualSea Lab and Oceana found that over 60% of the world’s large-scale fishing fleet lacks publicly available ownership information. More than one in six vessels are legally owned in a country different from their flag state. These fragmented ownership arrangements, often through shell companies or lax registries, blur the lines of responsibility. They are not accidental. They are strategic.

The lack of transparency makes it difficult to distinguish between legal operations and illicit activity. It complicates enforcement and undermines trust in fisheries governance. Perhaps most critically, it challenges the assumption that the blue economy can be meaningfully built without first addressing who controls access to marine resources, and under what terms. Nowhere are the consequences more severe than in Africa, where nearly 30% of large-scale vessels are owned outside the continent, with 20% controlled by European companies alone. 

What Collaboration Reveals

There are efforts underway to respond. Inter-regional collaboration is emerging as a key strategy, particularly in Africa. The idea behind initiatives like the African Blue Cordon is not just about stopping illegal activity, but about stitching together a fragmented enforcement landscape from West to Central Africa, down to Southern Africa and across to the Indian Ocean to create a more cohesive and resilient governance framework. It connects Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS) centres from across the continent into a shared network, enhancing the ability of states to share data, align protocols, and coordinate action.

Seeing Through the Complexity 

At the same time, innovation in fisheries intelligence is beginning to close some of the gaps. The Joint Analytical Cell (JAC), for example, brings together five partner organisations - IMCS Network, Global Fishing Watch, Trygg Mat Tracking (TMT), C4ADS, and Skylight - working in partnership with multiple government agencies to analyse patterns in vessel behaviour, ownership, and licensing. By merging datasets and applying advanced analytical tools, it becomes possible to identify high-risk vessels, track suspicious trends, and support investigations that might otherwise stall.

The Fragility Beneath the Vision

Still, these responses raise further questions. What does regional collaboration look like when capacities are uneven and geopolitical interests diverge? How can transparency be enforced in a system that often relies on voluntary disclosure? And will market actors including those benefiting from low-cost, high-volume seafood imports, genuinely support greater scrutiny if it disrupts supply chains?

These are not new dilemmas, but they remain under-addressed in many global ocean governance dialogues. While the blue economy is often presented as a hopeful narrative of growth, livelihoods, and innovation, there is a risk in assuming that its foundations are already in place.

At Trygg Mat Tracking (TMT), our 2024–2030 organisational strategy begins not with blue economy expansion, but with stopping the loss. That is because the reality is simple: you can’t build a sustainable blue economy on shaky foundations. You cannot pour in funding, governance reforms, and infrastructure while quietly tolerating criminal depletion of the very resources those investments depend on.

The challenge is not simply to build, but to fix what’s broken first. UNOC3 offers an opportunity to reflect not just on where we want to go, but on what we continue to overlook. The future of the blue economy will depend as much on confronting illegal extraction and systemic information gaps as it will on designing new models for sustainable ocean development.

The question is not whether a thriving blue economy is possible, but whether we are prepared to confront the hard truths that underpin its current fragility. Only by addressing the systemic theft of fisheries resources and ocean governance failures that still lay at its core can we begin to build a future that is truly sustainable.

Gareth Johnstone, Executive Director, TMT