Photographer’s 9-Month Investigation Uncovers the Hidden Hurt of the Fishing Trade

Photographer Nicole Tung makes use of her digital camera to reveal tough, vital tales from the hidden global of Southeast Asia’s fishing trade, shining a mild at the trade’s human and environmental prices.

Nicole Tung, a contract photojournalist born in Hong Kong and based totally between assignments international, has constructed a occupation on documenting one of the maximum pressing and hard tales of our time. Her paintings, incessantly focused on struggle and humanitarian crises, has gave the impression in main world publications and supported NGOs at the flooring.

This yr, she was once named the laureate of the fifteenth Carmignac Photojournalism Award, an honor that marks each a brand new bankruptcy in her occupation and a shift in center of attention to the intersection of human rights and environmental decline.

In collaboration with the Fondation Carmignac group, Nicole Tung shared insights into this award-winning undertaking with PetaPixel.

Black and white portrait of a young woman with long hair wearing a light-colored button-up shirt, looking confidently at the camera against a plain background. — Nicole Tung, Headshot via Chris McGrath

In regards to the Carmignac Photojournalism Award

Created in 2009, the Carmignac Photojournalism Award budget the manufacturing of long-term investigative tasks that make clear underreported problems international. Each and every yr, the Basis selects a geographic area and theme, providing laureates no longer handiest monetary beef up but additionally editorial freedom and logistical help. Not like many different awards, the Carmignac Award isn’t given for finished tasks. As a substitute, it’s in particular designed to permit reporters to hold out new paintings. For safety causes, the laureate is formally introduced handiest as soon as the reporting has been finished.

Tung’s undertaking on unlawful fishing and hard work abuses in Southeast Asia was once made imaginable thru this beef up. The award allowed her to spend 9 months within the box throughout Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, documenting a hidden trade the place ecological devastation and human exploitation incessantly stay out of public sight.

A fisherman wearing white boots carries a large tuna on his shoulder, walking between boats at a busy dock during sunset. Other people and fishing boats are visible in the background. — Filipino fishermen dump catches of Yellowfin tuna, Bigeye tuna, and Blue Marlin, after being at sea for about one month, at Basic Santos fish port, the Philippines, on Wednesday, Might 21, 2025. Basic Santos is referred to as the Philippines’ tuna capital and hub for tuna fishing and exports of the goods. Town hosts a large number of processing amenities the place the fish, basically tuna, is packaged or canned on the market to the Filipino marketplace and for export international.

Fishermen carry large yellowfin tuna over their shoulders at a busy dock, with other people and boats in the background during what appears to be early morning or evening. — Filipino fishermen dump catches of Yellowfin tuna, Bigeye tuna, and Blue Marlin, after being at sea for about one month, at Basic Santos fish port, the Philippines, on Wednesday, Might 21, 2025. Basic Santos is referred to as the Philippines’ tuna capital and hub for tuna fishing and exports of the goods. Town hosts a large number of processing amenities the place the fish, basically tuna, is packaged or canned on the market to the Filipino marketplace and for export international.

A woman in white boots and gloves squats amid a large pile of fish at a bustling seafood market, surrounded by other workers sorting and handling fish. — A Burmese dock employee looked after other fish species after a catch from a Thai vessel was once unloaded at a touchdown website in Ranong, Thailand, on Thursday, January 23, 2025.

A New Path

For Tung, the popularity additionally represented a significant departure from her standard center of attention on struggle zones, the place her paintings has incessantly focused on documenting the toll of warfare and displacement. Transferring to an environmental tale supposed no longer handiest enticing with a brand new subject material but additionally rethinking her visible and narrative method.

“I’m extraordinarily commemorated, and what it represents for my paintings is one thing fairly other within the sense that it isn’t about struggle. It unfolded a complete other set of demanding situations for me as a result of I needed to suppose in a different way about how you can method the topic of overfishing, to visualise its have an effect on at the atmosphere, and to know the fee on human lives of the meals we eat,” Tung says.

This shift required her to decelerate, immerse herself in communities, and broaden believe with the ones whose tales are incessantly invisible to the outdoor global. As a substitute of the immediacy of frontline reporting, the undertaking required persistence, long-term statement, and a radical exam of systemic problems relatively than surprising occasions. For Tung, the award supplied the gap and beef up to extend her storytelling follow, making use of the similar empathy and rigor she has dropped at struggle protection to the pressing questions of environmental justice and human rights at sea.

Investigating an Opaque Trade

Her reporting took her to Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, 3 nations on the center of worldwide fishing provide chains and concurrently some of the maximum suffering from unlawful practices. Business-scale fishing, she discovered, no longer handiest depletes fish shares and threatens biodiversity but additionally relies on exploitative hard work practices that incessantly stay invisible to customers.

“It was once assembly with fishermen who were recruited to paintings on Chinese language vessels, and listening to the tales of the abuse they witnessed and persisted, that stayed with me. It made me understand that we settle for those invisible prices of the seafood we consume at our peril, exactly as a result of they continue to be hidden from public view,” Tung recollects.

Get entry to to the trade is notoriously restricted, particularly at sea, the place operations are protected from oversight. Tung approached the topic via tracing the interconnections between environmental destruction, pressured hard work, and geopolitics. Her pictures file each the human toll on migrant laborers and the ecological cave in pushed via harmful fishing strategies.

Four women sit on a wooden floor inside a rustic building, wearing casual clothes, working with fishing nets. Woven bamboo walls, a red cooler, and plastic bags are visible in the background. — Members of the family of Filipino fishermen positioned bait on fishing traces in a position for use, in Quezon, Palawan, the Philippines, on Saturday, Might 24, 2025.

Three men wearing gloves and boots stand on top of a large pile of frozen, bloody fish inside a container, appearing to organize or arrange the fish. The environment looks cold and industrial. — Burmese migrant employees ready to dump loads of stingrays to transport them into chilly garage, at a facility owned via a circle of relatives of business fishers, in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, on Wednesday, January 15, 2025. Consistent with probably the most homeowners, the imported frozen fish and rays, observed right here, are introduced in from Indonesia and offered basically for home intake in Thailand. A lot of the seafood Thailand now consumes is being imported because of Thai waters being overfished the decline of fish shares during the last a number of many years.

A veterinarian wearing gloves examines the underside of a sea turtle standing upright on a blue towel in a clinic, with medical equipment visible in the background. — Oranee Jongkolpath, 30, a veterinarian at Thailand’s Marine and Coastal Sources Analysis and Building Heart in Rayong province, ready to wash a hawksbill turtle with a double amputation in Prasae, Thailand, on Saturday, January 18, 2025. The injured hawksbill turtle was once discovered via fishermen in a rubbish patch, and was once most likely entangled in ghost nets — fishing nets misplaced or discarded via fishermen — inflicting critical injury to its two entrance flippers.

A woman in a red patterned dress and face mask uses a hand truck to move a large white sack in a warehouse filled with similar bags stacked along the walls. Light streams through the ventilated brick wall. — A employee at a fishmeal manufacturing facility moved sacks of flooring fish meal in Chumphon, Thailand, on Thursday, January 23, 2025. Fishmeal is a coarsely flooring powder comprised of cooked wild fish, bycatch, and what’s referred to as trash fish, and is produced to make animal feed, and dog food, amongst different makes use of. The call for for fishmeal has supposed that over the top overfishing is threatening to cave in the ground of the meals chain.

Balancing Human and Environmental Tales

For Tung, keeping apart environmental degradation from human rights abuses is unattainable, as the 2 crises are intertwined at each stage of the fishing trade. The depletion of marine lifestyles is not only an ecological factor but additionally a human one, with exploitation and abuse woven into the similar machine that strips the seas in their assets.

“Business scale fishing is contributing to the speedy decline of fish shares as a result of the sheer quantity it eliminates from the ocean with out sustainable how one can permit fish to refill. What drives that, then again, is the exploitation of work. Vessels are beneath force to catch up to imaginable within the shortest time, and it isn’t successful for them to pay folks somewhat or deal with them with dignity,” Tung says.

Her reporting displays this inseparability, spanning a couple of sides of the trade that in combination shape a fancy and incessantly opaque community. Within the Philippines, she tested the tuna industry, a cornerstone of the worldwide seafood financial system, the place the trail from small coastal canneries to world markets unearths the trouble in tracing the origins of what finally ends up on plates around the globe. In Indonesia, she investigated the shark trade, the place meat is offered in the neighborhood however fins and bones are exported for cosmetics and standard drugs, highlighting how world call for fuels native exploitation. Around the area, she documented the running stipulations of crews, a lot of whom are migrant laborers trapped in cycles of debt, withheld wages, and, every now and then, violence aboard vessels running a long way from oversight.

Each and every layer of her reporting provides to a broader image of provide chains which might be huge, transnational, and in large part untraceable to customers. Via weaving in combination environmental loss with human struggling, Tung underscores how the seafood trade’s hidden prices are borne each via the oceans and the individuals who paintings inside of them.

The Function of Photojournalism

Tung believes that pictures can act as reminders of ongoing problems even if the details don’t seem to be new. Overfishing, unlawful and unreported practices, and abuses at sea were documented for years, however she argues that images can play a the most important position in conserving force on governments and firms to switch.

“Reminders of those abuses may also be vital and robust. Even though some nations have made enhancements, there’s nonetheless an extended method to move. I am hoping those pictures can function a reminder of the lengths to which governments and industrial corporations nonetheless want to make stronger,” she says.

Two wooden boats decorated with palm fronds carry people dressed in colorful clothing, celebrating on the water under a cloudy sky. Some people throw items into the air, and other boats are visible in the background. — Individuals of the Urak Lawoi indigenous crew and native Thai villagers charged their boats in opposition to the shore after amassing other types of wooden on different within reach islands all the way through a bi-annual competition to near out the fishing and tourism season, on Koh Lipe, Thailand, on Sunday, Might 11, 2025. The wooden could be used for development a ceremonial boat as an providing to the tribes ancestors. The Urak Lawoi tribe have observed their tactics of lifestyles have trade in recent times to be geared in opposition to creating wealth from tourism relatively than fishing, because of industrial fishing depleting fish shares round their waters.

A group of people work together on the deck of a fishing boat, hauling in a large fishing net from the ocean under a partly cloudy sky. Some crew members are pulling the net aboard while others observe. — Business fishermen are observed out at sea, on Tuesday, Might 27, 2025, about 50 nautical miles off the coast of Rizal, Palawan, the Philippines. Many Filipino industrial and small-scale fishers are being chased or hassled via Chinese language Coast Guard, Military, and military ships whilst out at sea. Prior to now, assaults or harassment on this house didn’t exist, however was once well-documented in different spaces. Since August 2024, incidences of harassment have began and greater since. Many Filipino fishermen imagine that the Chinese language at the moment are transferring to construct outposts within the within reach Sabina Shoal to dominate each industry routes and the fishing trade.

Aerial view of a densely packed harbor filled with fishing boats at dusk, with city buildings and the coastline visible in the background under a cloudy sky. — A drone symbol appearing the most important industrial fish port in Indonesia, Muara Angke, the place loads of business fishing vessels are docked, in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Sunday, June 15, 2025.

Two men carry a large shark on a wooden pole at a busy coastal fishing area, with boats, motorcycles, and other people in the background under morning sunlight. — More than a few species of sharks, a few of which can be endangered, whilst others are indexed as prone, hauled on shore at daybreak via industrial fishermen on the Tanjung Luar port on Monday, June 9, 2025, in East Lombok, Indonesia. Tanjung Luar is without doubt one of the greatest shark markets in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, from the place shark fins are exported to different Asian markets, basically Hong Kong and China, was once bones are utilized in beauty merchandise additionally offered to China. Shark meat and skins are ate up in the neighborhood as crucial supply of protein. In recent times, going through heavy complaint as a result of the unregulated shark fishing trade, the Indonesian executive has sought to herald stricter controls over industrial looking of sharks in an try to steadiness the desires of fishermen in addition to the desire to offer protection to dwindling shark populations.

Having a look Ahead

Even though she has spent years running in warfare zones, Nicole Tung says she hopes to proceed pursuing tales that cope with local weather trade, environmental justice, and the human value of ecological cave in. The Carmignac-supported undertaking, she feels, has handiest scratched the outside of what continues to be exposed.

“I am hoping I will proceed this undertaking in some capability sooner or later. There’s so a lot more to discover on this darkish and opaque trade that a long way too incessantly disregards the truth that the catch within the sea isn’t countless,” Tung says.

As Southeast Asia’s waters develop ever extra contested, the steadiness between human livelihoods and ecological survival turns into increasingly more pressing. For Nicole Tung, images is not just about bearing witness however about making sure that the hidden prices of on a regular basis intake are introduced into public view.

Symbol credit: Nicole Tung, Carmignac Photojournalism Award, Chris McGrath