Correspondence
Email sent to The Town Dock’s Director of Marketing & Communications, Kat Smith.
The email said: "I’m writing to you in light of our latest investigation, which concerns abuses in the Chinese squid fishing industry, and a link we’ve discovered between companies engaged in abuses and The Town Dock’s supply chain.
This link concerns a Chinese squid jigger owned by the Chinese fishery company, Rongcheng Wangdao Ocean Aquatic Products. In a seven-month period, one crew member died and a second was disembarked for emergency medical treatment after suffering serious mistreatment and abuse while on board the vessel. Our reporting documents multiple indicators of forced labor among crew onboard the vessel: recruitment linked to debt, deceptive recruitment, enforced isolation, degrading living conditions, physical violence, wage withholding, the retention of personal identity documents and strong financial penalties for leaving employment.
We have traced squid caught by that vessel to a large Chinese fisheries company in Shandong province called the Chishan Group. Further to its connections to the vessel, ships owned by the Chishan Group were found fishing in North Korean waters in violation of UN sanctions in 2017 and 2018. Chishan’s processing plant, Shandong Haidu Ocean Product Co. Ltd., supplies squid products to The Town Dock.
Does The Town Dock have any comment or statement to make on the record in response to this information?"
Kat Smith at The Town Dock replied: "We do not have a current relationship with the Chinese squid jigger or processing plant referenced in your inquiry."
The Outlaw Ocean Project replied: "Thanks so much for your reply to my query, really appreciate your engagement on this.
We received confirmation from the processor Shandong Haidu six months ago that it was supplying you with squid. Was that inaccurate then, or has the relationship changed in the meantime?
We know you to be a progressive player on seafood sourcing. We’ve heard from multiple stakeholders, though, at all levels of the squid industry - importers, exporters, vessel operators, cold storage, and processing companies - that there are many points where catch can, and does, get comingled or aggregated. At the reefer level, after squid is caught by multiple ships, it can be comingled. At the docks level, it can get comingled as it comes off the ships. At the processing level, it can get comingled in the plant. There’s also the reality of collectives in China and conglomerates that often trade squid between each other.
For all of these reasons, we’re hearing that traceability in squid supply chains is particularly weak. In some cases, it seems next to impossible to determine which specific vessel caught a batch of squid, because there’s such a high likelihood that it has been comingled. So we'd welcome understanding of how the Town Dock can be sure it has no relationship to the fishing vessel of concern."