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Public Health, Safety and TrustTo Russia—To Find the BoatsIn December 2005, we traveled toMurmansk, Russia, the base for BarentsSea fishing. It’s bitter cold andour photographer is suffering fromfood poisoning. We are here withDima Litvinov, who has worked inthe region for Greenpeace for a longtime and has contacts and entriesinto the Russian fishing industry apparatus.Our intention is to find outif the trawlers on our list have beenpoaching fish.We’d compiled our list of fishingand transport vessels by chartingsatellite identities of their locationsand call signals. We’d used bills oflanding, inspection protocols, catchlandingprotocols, and a commercialnet service that accounts for reportedcatches. By doing this, we’d managedto chart how much cod the big factorytrawlers have caught and delivered. Butfor us to prove that they have poached,we must know the size of the quotaeach trawler was given and what catchthey’d reported to the authorities herein Murmansk.In this quest resides our problem:The information is classified.Yet plenty is at stake in finding theanswer. Each year at least two peopleare murdered in Murmansk as a resultof the fight for revenues from illegalfishing in the Barents Sea. With thisdanger in mind, it is understandablewhy few people are willing to speakwith us. But after a few days, ourperseverance pays off: We have abreakthrough when we are alloweda meeting with a key person in thefishery authorities. We leave the camerain the car outside but take a hiddentransmitter microphone with us.“Understand me right. I’ll help witheverything, but I don’t want publicity.My job is to ensure the state’s interestagainst fish poaching, and that isdone today. It is well organized,” hesays to us, referring to the ways inwhich quotes are routinely exceeded.“As an example, I can tell about somecompanies who had a quota of 200tons, which you can fish in a week,but they went to sea with that quotafor a whole year.”This source also gave us access tothe Russian boats’ latest quotas. Hisnew information tallied with olderdata about quotas we’d received fromofficial sources in Norway.When we got back to Stockholm,we worked on doing the math. Theessential equation was this one: howmuch cod had each trawler caught vs.what their quota was during the sameperiod. Here are a few examples:• Factory trawler Koyda: Documenteddelivery 1,204 tons of cod, accordingto Norwegian authorities. Officialquota: 479 tons, according to theRussian source. A difference of 725tons.• Factory trawler Eridan: Delivery1,121 tons. Quota 291. A differenceof 830 tons.And so it continued—boat after boat,fabrication after fabrication.Exactly how much illegally fishedcod is sold in Sweden can’t be establishedwith certainty. But one thingis absolutely clear: The nation’s bigfood suppliers’ guarantee proved tobe worthless.Our investigation—and the two-partreport, “The Illegal Cod,” broadcast inJanuary 2006 on Swedish TV4’s program“Kalla Fakta” (Cold Facts)—hadsome major results:• Several companies who traded withpoaching trawlers (Findus, for example)immediately ceased doingbusiness with them.• Several Swedish food chains, afterinternal investigations, changedtheir suppliers of cod or changedtheir internal ways of controllingthe delivery of fish.• The Swedish and Norwegian fisheryministers joined forces and broughtthe matter to the EU Commissionfor immediate attention, and finallythe EU, after years of handwringing,managed to enforce its ruleson control of ports, and the illegallandings in mainland Europe cameto a halt.• By September 2006, promises hadbeen made by a number of key countriesto report on the deliveries of codtaking place in their ports.• The Danish police’s economic crimeunit began a preliminary investigationagainst one of the big wholesalersin Denmark.• Environment organizations likeWorld Wildlife Federation andGreenpeace took actions against thecompanies and authorities involved.Two years later, the Norwegian fisheriesauthorities reported that dueto the decrease in illegal fishing, theincreased value of legally landed fishwas some $300 million.In the winter of 2006 on the BarentsSea, an object was picked up bythe searchlight. It was a ship, andsoon the Norwegian Coast Guard wasrequesting it to lower speed so it couldbe inspected.“Inna Gusenkova!,” called the commanderof KV Harstad.Just like the last time. Our RIB tripto the Russian ship was just as darkand bouncy, and our jump to the pilotladder just as terrifying.“Do you know who the buyer is?”the inspector asked, after he’d lookedthrough the documents on board.“Agent take the fish … I have noproblem … agent give me papers …I don’t need to know more information…” the captain answered, thencontinued. “I do my work and nomore. If you know less, you will livelonger.” Sven Bergman, Joachim Dyfvermark,and Fredrik Laurin have worked asfreelance investigative reporters formore than a decade and as a reporting/producingteam since 2000. “TheIllegal Cod” was broadcast on SwedishNational TV4 in September 2008, andit won The International Consortiumof International Journalists’ DanielPearl Award for the best investigationby an international medium. For theirreporting of the 2004 story, “ExtraordinaryRendition,” which revealedthe top-secret deportation from Swedenof two Egyptian men by maskedAmerican agents, they received manyawards, including the Stora Journalistpriset,the Swedish equivalent of thePulitzer Prize.Nieman Reports | Summer 2009 73