Founded in 2012 in Honolulu, we help businesses and governments to face exploitation in supply chains and oceans to produce goods and growth durably and with dignity.
Our clients are diverse and include the ASEAN group of nations, Humanity United and the Freedom Fund, Whole Foods, UN-FAO, the Hawaii Tuna Fleet, SYMPAC and Fong Hsiang Enterprises, International Organization for Migration, governments of Indonesia and the Philippines, Thai Union and many others. We succeed together by reconciling conflicting needs:
Livelihoods and environmental sustainability,
Economic efficiency and worker dignity,
Global markets and local communities.
Producers and buyers have different pressures. Workers and employers have different interests. Governments and industries have different responsibilities. None can sustain their interests without strong working relationships and that is where we come in.
We steward the system.
We steward the system by helping governments or businesses to reset arrangements for a better match to the local setting for their goals. We find shared objectives for people with competing interests and different stakes. We investigate conditions to find the places and people most affected and ensure an effective response. We prepare practical research and assist our clients to adapt their policies and build the capacity needed to shift the business model away from exploitation and towards stability.
Here is an example of our work to face exploitation at sea:
2011-14: Illegal fishing was a global concern but nobody knew the size or locus of the problem. We estimated the magnitude of illegal fishing worldwide by tracing the illegal content in the top 3 U.S. seafood imports from 10 countries, finding 20-32% on average and 70% for Thai tuna. Results: The US struck a Presidential Task Force and began monitoring imports, citing our work 44x.
2013-16: We invested in co-research with Thai human rights defenders after learning forced labour was government policy. Together we developed detection methods that we published in Science Advances and used to screen over 500 supply chains. Results: Our partners Labour Rights Promotion Network rescued 4000 enslaved fishers. We introduced Human Rights Due Diligence to the seafood industry and won the Partnership for Freedom grand prize for a digital version.
2015-2024: We trained over 80 seafood suppliers in 14 countries and invested heavily in building capacity for labour oversight by developing curricula and training inspectors at 4 ports in Indonesia and the Philippines and 6 industry sectors on decent work in Thailand and Indonesia with IOM. We drafted UN guidelines for the sector. Results: Thirteen young women were rescued and their traffickers apprehended at General Santos airport by inspectors using the response protocol we helped them to build and implement.
Pandemic: Fishers were stranded at sea when the MSC ecolabel said forced labour risks were lower for certified seafood. Supermarkets raised consumer prices for shrimp when worker earnings and producer prices were in free-fall. We investigated sector-wide rights-washing for Humanity United and the Freedom Fund. Results: We published findings in Nature that sparked actions by Oceana, Global Labour Justice, ITF and features by the Financial Times and Swiss RTS. Major newspapers in Asia and all major US networks ran AP.s feature on our findings that markets appeared to be driving a spread of unpaid work across the global sector.
2025-26: We assisted the 11 member nations of ASEAN to enact a regional policy for fishing labour and prepared practical workplace tools for workers and employers to use, like a Crew Rights Handbook and Vessel Owner Code of Conduct for the Hawaii Tuna Fleet, translated in Tagalog, Bahasa, Vietnamese. We also support 2 Fishery Improvement Projects. Results: Regional guidelines and policy for SE Asian fishers. Stronger working relationships for Hawaii tuna. Less capture and death for sea birds, turtles, sharks and rays.
We invest in a long-term strategy of facing exploitation inside global supply chains and collaborate with everyone to reset arrangements for durable production with dignity.
Resources to Share
Curricula for Port Inspections to Detect & Respond to Forced Labour:
- International Organization for Migration-Training-Manual-for-Fishing-and-Seafood-Enterprises_Thailand,
- IOM-Training-Manual-for-Fishing-and-Seafood-Enterprises-Indonesia,
- SAFE-Seas-Training-Manual-for-Port-Inspectors-Philippines.
- SAFE-Seas-Training-Manual-for-Port-Inspectors_Indonesia.
- Recent Publications:
- Is tuna ecolabeling causing fishers more harm than good? Nature
- A Practical Take on the Duty to Uphold Rights in the Seafood Workplace. Marine Policy.
- Seeing Slavery in Seafood Supply Chains. Science Advances.
- Committing to Socially Responsible Seafood, Science.
- Social equity is key to sustainable ocean governance. Nature.
- The role of human rights in implementing socially responsible seafood. PloS One.
- Committing to socially responsible seafood. Science.
- Estimates of illegal and unreported fish in seafood imports to the USA Marine Policy.
- Op/Ed: The numbers tell the story when it comes to forced labor in seafood. Seafood Source Media.
- Performance of regional fisheries management organizations: ecosystem‐based governance of bycatch and discards,
- Improvements to Rapfish: a rapid evaluation technique for fisheries integrating ecological and human dimensions
- Sea turtle bycatch to fish catch ratios for differentiating Hawaii longline-caught seafood products.
Contact us at the.sustainability.incubator@gmail.com. Mahalo.