Undocumented Crews Catch US's Fancy Fish From Hawaii for 70 Cents Per Hour

By Nicole Puglise, Guardian UK and Associated Press

08 September 16

 

Hawaiian seafood Americans buy from high-end stores and restaurants is ‘almost certainly’ mostly caught by undocumented fishermen working 20-hour days

undreds of undocumented men work in Hawaii on fishing boats, making as little as 70 cents an hour and unable to step on to US soil because they do not have visas, a six-month long Associated Press investigation has found.

The report was part of an ongoing investigation of “labor abuses in the fishing industry” done by the AP.

“The entire system, which contradicts other state and federal laws, operates with the blessing of high-ranking US lawmakers and officials,” authors Martha Mendoza and Margie Mason wrote.

Americans who eat Hawaiian seafood are “almost certainly” consuming fish caught by the men on these boats, as their highly valued catches are sold in premium restaurants and stores like Whole Foods.

“This is a unique situation,” coast guard vessel examiner Charles Medlicott told the AP. “But it is legal.”

Due to a loophole pushed for by “influential lawmakers”, Hawaii’s commercial fishing boats are exempted from “from federal rules enforced almost everywhere else”. The workers “have little legal recourse” in areas of labor rights, and “are detained on boats where US Customs and Border Protection requires captains to hold the men’s passports”.

“That potentially goes against federal human trafficking laws saying bosses who possess workers’ identification documents can face up to five years in prison,” the AP wrote.

Brokers are paid to bring the workers, who come from places like Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam or Kiribati, to the approximately 140 boats in the fleet. The men are not allowed to land at the airport in Honolulu, though they are allowed to exit the country from there.

The conditions on each boat vary by captain – with some tidy, and others piled with garbage or requiring crew members to use the bathroom in buckets or over the side of the ship, the AP reported. The men rely on the captains for food and medical attention.

The fishermen work 20-hour days, and can get paid “as little as $350 a month… but still more than they can make back home in countries where people live on less than a dollar a day,” the AP wrote.

One man from the Philippines told the Associated Press that he was working to support his teenage daughter and son in college until they finish school. A 23-year-old man from Indonesia said he decided to get a job on the boat because he was jealous of neighbors who returned from Hawaii with money to buy a house.

“It turns out that the salary I got is not much better than my job in my homeland. How can I have a house when I’m back home?” he said. “It’s just my silly dream.”