A report launched during the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17) this month calls for fisheries to end practices including forced labour, sexual coercion, and activities that cause serious ecological harm, arguing that healthy fish stocks alone cannot establish whether a fishery is ethical. The Moral Catch: Fisheries, Justice, and the Living Ocean, published by Faiths for Oceans—a multi-faith campaign bringing together religious leaders, institutions, and communities to advocate for ocean protection—includes reflections from Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim contributors. 

The report was launched on 22 October at COP17, which runs from 19–30 October in Yerevan, Armenia. The fourm marks the first global review of progress toward implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which includes a target of conserving at least 30 per cent of the world’s marine and coastal areas by 2030. 

“The Moral Catch: Fisheries, Justice, and the Living Ocean asks a question that is simple and troubling: when a fish is caught, what else is taken along with it? Who benefited? Who bore the cost? Who lost a source of food, their freedom, or their access to the resource along the way?” Faiths for Oceans shared with BDG.

The Moral Catch argues that conservation measures must account for the rights and livelihoods of the communities that depend on marine resources, particularly when protected areas or fishing closures restrict access without adequate safeguards or support.

In his reflection, Buddhist practitioner Shoukei Matsumoto of the Living Dharma Centre and professor at Musashino University in Tokyo remarks: “Restraint without repair would be abandonment; what the grasp has taken must also be returned.”

The Moral Catch examines the human and ecological costs of fishing through eight case studies, following fish through chains of labour, food, trade, and ownership, from Senegal and Lake Victoria to Pacific tuna fisheries and Chilean salmon farms. It notes that assessments must consider the treatment of workers, access to food, the livelihoods of coastal communities, and the lives of animals caught.

“Stock assessments can tell us whether a population can withstand fishing pressure,” Faiths for Oceans said, emphasizing: “But they do not tell us whether a worker was free to leave an industrial fishing vessel, whether a family could still afford fish caught in its own waters, whether women have lost access to markets and their livelihoods, or what that same fish experienced during capture and killing.”

Citing a 2021 International Labour Organization estimate, the report says that about 128,000 fishers were in forced labour, with the actual number potentially higher. Recruitment debt, withheld wages, and long periods offshore can trap workers in jobs they cannot safely leave. Meanwhile, women’s access to fish and markets has also been linked to sexual pressure or coercion.

The report identifies “stop conditions” that require a harmful practices to cease and cannot be offset by economic benefits, certification claims, or healthy stock assessments. These include forced labour, hazardous child labour, sexual coercion, systematic violence, bribery that disables protection, knowingly using practices likely to cause extinction, significant adverse impacts on vulnerable marine ecosystems that cannot be prevented, and other severe habitat harm.

The report goes on to point put that ending a harmful practice does not resolve past damage. It underscores the need for remedies and transition finance to protect people whose livelihoods depend on the activities being discontinued, adding that families should not be pushed into debt while waiting for assistance.

Acknowledging that faith traditions hold different perspectives on killing and eating fish, the report does not prescribe a single religious rule. It remarks that where people have abundant alternatives, choosing not to consume seafood can be a serious moral position: “Sometimes restraint means taking less. Sometimes it means leaving the fish in the water.” 

Matsumoto highlighted in his Buddhist reflection: “I grew up in a fishing village in Hokkaido. One day, as a schoolchild playing at the shore, I watched a fisherman throw his trash into the water beneath a signboard on the beach: The sea is the fisherman’s field. He was not a bad man. He was of my grandfather’s generation, and in his hands the gesture had once done no harm. When he learned the sea, most of what a household discarded was organic; the water turned it into life again. The wrapper in his hand was plastic.

The hand had not heard the news. In my vocabulary this is karma: not fate, but a habit that continues after its conditions have gone. Much of what this report documents is karma in that sense, working at industrial scale.”

The report cites Food and Agriculture Organization data showing that 62.4 per cent of assessed marine stocks were within biologically sustainable limits in 2023. It cautions, however, that the assessment does not cover every fishery and that changes in figures reflect revised methods and newly assessed stocks as well as biological change. 

To assess impacts, the report proposes a framework of six conditions: Protect, Nourish, Reconcile, Restore, Source, and Abstain, and posits that responsibility for preventing harm should reflect the power to change conditions. Governments control access to fisheries and enforce regulations; owners shape working conditions; buyers influence prices and standards; banks and insurers enable vessels, farms, and processing facilities to operate.

“Can workers carry out their jobs without coercion? Do communities retain access to food and their livelihoods? Are their rights recognized? Is harm repaired, including damage to habitats? Can ownership and responsibility be traced through the supply chain? And when must a harmful practice stop?” Faiths for Oceans asks.

The report also points out that workers, women processors, Indigenous peoples, fishers, and coastal communities organize and resist harmful practices, but have less influence over licences, contracts, and capital.

The Moral Catch invites faith institutions to review one seafood, investment, or grant relationship against the six conditions using a Faith Fisheries Toolkit to decide whether to continue, improve, pause, or stop, and register their commitments with the Faiths High Ambition Coalition for Ocean and Nature Action.

“There is no perfect, universal solution for every fishery. But uncertainty is not a reason to delay action on established harm,” Faiths for Oceans stated. “A moral relationship with the ocean begins with recognizing our dependence on it and our responsibilities toward the life it sustains.”

Click to read the full report.

See more

The Moral Catch
Faiths for Oceans
UNEP at the UN Biodiversity Conference

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