Stop illegal fishing in Europe's oceans!

Global overshing is one of the main sustainability challenges the world faces. In Europe the situation is increasingly dire with the European Commission recently reporting that 93% of all Mediterranean fisheries are over-exploited. Many larger fish species in Europe are threatened (mackerel, cod, tuna, swordsh) and some species are close to extinction, such as bluefin tuna, which’ populations are estimated to be down to less than 5% of pre-industrial fishing numbers.

The Black Fish was founded in 2010 by a group of young conservationists who set out to build a grassroots marine activism community with a focus on exposing and challenging illegal and destructive fishing practices in European waters.

Over the last years The Black Fish has run various investigations into illegal fishing activities, including monitoring of illegal bluefin tuna fishing in Croatia, tracking of illegal driftnet use in the Tyrrhenian Sea, dynamite fishing off Tunisia, deep sea shark fishing and finning in Morocco and the landing and trade of juvenile fish in Sicily. Up in the Baltic Sea, illegal cod fishing has been uncovered in a nephrops fishery in Sweden. All investigative campaigns of The Black Fish are brought together in its Citizen Inspector Network, which was launched in 2014 and has since trained 50 people as Citizen Inspectors.

We are now working to scale up our Citizen Inspector Network and to make more monitoring capacity available around Europe. Help us to strengthen our network and to end illegal fishing 

in Europe! Donate today or apply to become a Citizen Inspector yourself! Thank you!