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21st Century Muckrakersone of the Swedish market’s biggestfood producers, when we asked.To do this story, we decided to chartthe flow of all frozen cod productsbeing sold in Swedish shops and torestaurants and schools. With the helpof markings on packages, questionsto fish companies, searches in publicregisters, consignment notes and contactswith authorities in more than10 countries, for several months weattempted to trace the origins of codproducts. Only we did this by movingbackwards—from store counters tofishing vessels.At first, we visited many shops and,with the help of camera and notebook,we started to register all of the codproducts we could find with notesabout their origin and processingplants. Soon we had a list of severalhundred products containing cod fromthe Barents Sea. Our next step was todetermine the retailer of each productand from where the product hadbeen bought and where it had beenprocessed. What plant and when?Which agent had sold the cod to thatplant? Where did the agent buy thefish? And which boat had caught thecod and when?Here is what our charting helpedus reveal:cold seas onto the Russian freezer ship.Fortunately, the rope ladder held and,pumped full of adrenalin, we were atlast on board, and the Jupiter’s captainwas offering us vodka and cigarettes inhis dirty cabin. He made it clear thathe regarded the Norwegian inspectionas completely unnecessary. Everythingis in order, he assured the Norwegianfishing inspectors, who politely butfirmly told him that they wanted tosee all documents. Not only the onesthat concerned this cargo but earlierTransports to foreign ports are notillegal; there is nothing that compelsthe Russian trawlers to leave their fishin Russian or even Norwegian ports.Of course the question remains: Whatmotivates this extra sea voyage lastingmore than a week?We knew the answer—and we knewwe wouldn’t hear it today. In Russia andNorway, the fishing vessels risk beinginspected by officials who check theboats’ quotas, thereby distinguishingbetween legally and illegally caught• A large proportion of the frozen codthat was fished in the Barents Seawas then sold in Sweden.• Much of these fish products, however,had made a long detour viaChina—more precisely throughQingdao Province. There the fishwere thawed, filleted by cheap labor,packaged and then frozen again,before being transported back toEurope and the Swedish freezercounters.In time, we were able to compile along list of the trawlers who deliveredcod to the Swedish market. Our nextstep was to investigate whether theseboats poached fish.At Sea—To Tell the StoryNow, here we were, again preparingto leap from our RIB in these choppyOn the ground is a victim of a shootout in the violence that erupts as part of this illegalfishing market. Murmansk, Russia. This is a screenshot from “The Illegal Cod,” broadcast onSwedish National TV4.ones, too.“Do you know where the last cargoof cod landed?” the Norwegian fishinginspectors asked.“Previous captain … He signed off… He took with him … all reports,”the captain answered.In the Barents Sea, we knew thatthe Russian factory trawlers mostlytransfer the cod to refrigeration ships,like the Jupiter, which go to ports suchas Grimsby, in England; Hirtshals, inDenmark; Bremerhaven, in Germany;Aveiro, in Portugal, or Eemshaven, inHolland. There, the catch is unloaded.cod. In other European ports, the codis treated like any other merchandise.The catch is off-loaded and passedon without any knowledge aboutfishing vessels’ quotas. It is thereforeevidently worth the trouble to reloadone or even two times at sea to havethe catch transported to “safe” harborsin bigger refrigeration ships.When the Jupiter inspection endsan hour later, we head back the sameterrible way we came up. As weclumsily disappear across the rail, thecaptain eyes us as he stands smuglyon the bridge.72 Nieman Reports | Summer 2009