We push to expand research frontier on ‘labour in fisheries’ and 'global fisheries policy and supply chains’ and make impacts in wider societies. We plan to explore the relations between labour precarity and the working conditions of vulnerable workers on the one hand, and supplying seafood for high income consumers in wealthy countries on the other hand. We will do so by analyzing supply chains, ecologies, livelihoods, and labour in the production of so-called trash fish in mainland Southeast Asia.

We will use trash fish as a methodological object to trace the ecological state of the ocean and the labour conditions of workers. Trash fish, also known as forage fish or low value fish, are a critical ingredient in animal feeds, and often caught unsustainably. Despite its importance for resiliency and ocean ecologies, we know very little about it.