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THE OUTLAW OCEAN PROJECT

Listen — the hidden cost of seafood (China pt. 2) Episode 7

Spread across the Earth’s oceans, the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet is the single largest armada in human history. This three-part series is an unprecedented investigation into their secretive fishing practices. The fleet is so gargantuan that even the Chinese government can’t account for all its vessels. We do know it has hauled in more than $35-billion worth of catch per year and has sold it across the globe – and yet, almost nothing was known about its practices. That is, until The Outlaw Ocean team started asking questions, and eventually managed to get aboard a dozen Chinese vessels to investigate.
Listen — the hidden cost of seafood (China pt. 2) Episode 7 A still from a video uploaded to a Chinese government Douyin account in 2023 depicting a labour transfer organised by the Kashgar authorities. (Photo: Douyin, Kashgar Media Center)
The Outlaw Ocean Project
By The Outlaw Ocean Project
22 Jul 2025
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Episode highlights:

  • Nowhere is more difficult to report than China, and seafood is an unusually tough product to investigate. Host Ian Urbina explains the various reporting methods his team needed to employ over four years to track how seafood gets from bait to plate;
  • Right at the heart of this secretive supply chain, the team finds forced Uyghur labour, with the cascading effects of family separation, relocation and a plummeting birth rate. The international community has scrutinised China’s human rights abuses against this predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, and specific laws were set up to protect them from exploitation – but the Uyghur people’s role in seafood production was totally off the radar. In total, we identified forced Uyghur labour tied to seafood imported to more than 20 countries, including the US and Canada; and
  • Ian reflects on the many costs hidden along this complex supply chain, and the larger question: how have we allowed the seafood we eat to be so thoroughly comingled with environmental and human rights abuses? What is the true cost of the low prices we see on our seafood? And who’s really paying for it?

Workers in 2023 at a seafood plant called Yantai Sanko Fisheries in Shandong Province, China, which relies on Uyghur and other labor from Xinjiang and exports to the U.S., Canada, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. (Photo: Douyin, Kashgar Media Center )
Workers in 2023 at a seafood plant called Yantai Sanko Fisheries in Shandong Province, China, which relies on Uyghur and other labour from Xinjiang and exports to the US, Canada, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. (Photo: Douyin, Kashgar Media Center)
Ethnic minority workers at Yantai Sanko Fisheries Co. Ltd. attend political education sessions at the factory in 2021, a common component of China's state-imposed forced labor system. (Photo: Yantai United Front Work Department )
Ethnic minority workers at Yantai Sanko Fisheries attend political education sessions at the factory in 2021, a common component of China’s state-imposed forced labour system. (Photo: Yantai United Front Work Department)

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