“2021 IN FISH! student Robert Dellinger talks about his summer internship experience with our Northeast Fisheries Science Center and shares what National Hispanic Heritage Month means to him.”
Seafood is one of the largest traded commodities in the world. The seafood industry employs over 260 million workers globally, and 3 billion people rely on seafood as their primary source of protein. Thailand is the world’s fourth-largest seafood processing industry. Thailand's fishing industry is estimated to bring 7 billion-dollars in revenue annually. It has deep political and economic roots as it is a large supplier to the European Union and the United States. Unsustainable fishing has degraded Thailand's fisheries to the point that many vessel operators slash labor costs through trafficked slave labor in its fishing sector. The Thai government estimates 300,000 people work in its fishing industry, 90 percent of whom are undocumented immigrants vulnerable to trafficking and enslavement. Thailand's fishing vessels are integral to the global consumption of seafood as these fleets provide fish for major corporations like Walmart, Carrefour, Costco, and Tesco.
“We have ended the war on American energy,” President Trump stated in his most recent State of the Union address. Seven years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster coated the Gulf of Mexico in oil, the Trump administration plans to legalize offshore drilling on most U.S. coastline.
The proposed five-year plan will allow oil companies to drill in 47 areas of America’s public coastlines, which will be the first major offshore drilling expansion proposed since 1984. Essentially, our oceans and coasts are being auctioned off by the GOP-backed Trump administration, as they erase the 2010 policies put into place following the worst oil spill in U.S. history. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the Deepwater Horizon Spill caused more than $8.8 billion in damages to natural resources alone.
Let this be an example of what is to come if this drilling legislation becomes law.