Fishy Work
A podcast about marine ecologies and labouring at sea hosted by Ian M. Cook and Alin Kadfak. Join us as we cast off into a sea of trash fish, worker precarity, racism, and labour campaigns to name but a few of the topics we’ll find stranded, floating, and calling out to have a podcast made about them. https://www.justseafood.org/podcast
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Episodes
Monday Oct 21, 2024
Monday Oct 21, 2024
Welcome to Episode 5 of Fishy Work, Un-romancing the Eco Label! In this episode we dig deeper into seafood eco labels, ask if they cause more harm than good for fishworkers, and explore why it is so difficult to create ethical labels for seafood products. This episode we're going to be speaking with Chris Williams & Katrina Nakamura
Monday Sep 16, 2024
Monday Sep 16, 2024
Hello and welcome to Fishy Work Episode 4: Union Power
In this episode, we're going to be speaking with Bright Maté Kweku Chai, a former fisher and boatswain on industrial trawls, semi industrial and artisanal vessels. Bright now acts as a local chairman for NUSPAW, the National Union for Sea, Port and Allied Workers in Ghana.
And we're also joined by Vanessa Jaiteh, a senior research scientist at the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Monday Aug 19, 2024
Monday Aug 19, 2024
Hello and welcome to Fishy Work Episode 3, What happens when people move and refuse? In Fishy Work thus far we've spoken more broadly about why conditions at sea can be so bad, including organized attempts to improve the working lives of fish workers. And we've also spoken about the management of the fish supply chain, including how NGOs have worked with companies, especially with the aim of removing forced labour from their business networks. In this episode, we want to centre on the fish workers, especially migrant workers, including looking into how they migrate and, crucially, what their migration means in social, political, and economic terms. And we have two amazing researchers to help us understand this. Siddharth Chakravarty, a PhD researcher at Queen Mary University of London, and Andrew Lee, assistant professor at the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University.
Monday Jul 15, 2024
Monday Jul 15, 2024
We've been thinking about supply chain management, and it's much less abstract that is sounds! It allows is to put people, products, and political invention into one framework, and it allows us to ask the question - when thinking aboutemployment conditions in the fishing industry - is it business as usual? This episode's guests are Miriam Wilhelm, Professor of Sustainable Supply Chain Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and Andrew Crane, Professor of Business and Society at the University of Bath.
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
Welcome to the first ever episode of Fishy Work, my name is Ian. Join me this season as we cast off into a sea of trash fish, worker precarity, racism, and labour campaigns to name but a few of the topics we'll find stranded and floating, calling out to have a podcast made about them.
In this episode we’re talking with Melissa Marschke and Peter Vandergeest about what structures working conditions at sea, why it can be so bad, yet why fishing is still meaningful for many fisher folk, how researchers go about researching labour at sea, and what organisations, campaigners and unions are doing to help improve working conditions.
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
A podcast about marine ecologies and labouring at sea hosted by Ian M. Cook and Alin Kadfak. Join us as we cast off into a sea of trash fish, worker precarity, racism, and labour campaigns to name but a few of the topics we’ll find stranded, floating, and calling out to have a podcast made about them. Expect a new episode on the third Monday of every month!
What's the show about?
Welcome to Fishy Work, my name is Ian. Join me this season as we cast off into a sea of trash fish, worker precarity, racism, and labour campaigns to name but a few of the topics we'll find stranded and floating, calling out to have a podcast made about them.
You may ask, why are they calling out to have podcasts made about them, what's so interesting about labour at sea?
Well, because, it turns out, many of us - including me - don’t know that much about the work, or the workers who catch the fish that most of us eat.
Sure, you might have a vague sense that there is overfishing, as it pops up in the news with semi regularity.
And maybe you have romantic ideas about gruff men with impressive beards, weathered hands and chunky jumpers - who are lashed by rain for weeks at sea before returning to their homely wives at shore or - if you excuse me as I adjust my western centric point of view for a moment - you might have romantic images of gangs of men with wide shorts and wider smiles casting nets across south East Asia.
Or, maybe, it might even be the case that you know there's something fishy going on. You might have vague memories of media reports about abuse in the industry, even forced labour, that you try not to think about so much as you bite into your tuna sandwiches.
But, but, but there's lots going on beyond romance, scandals, and vague guilt
In this podcast we want to take you a little deeper and speak to people who have cast a critical analytical eye over ecologies, labour and fish governance.
We’re not looking to be sensationalist - though many of the stories you hear are sensational
Nor do we want to make you feel bad about whatever you put into your mouth, what you do at dinner time is your business
Rather I want to learn about fish and work through a series of discussions with researchers who have dedicated a good deal of their lives making sense of it all, and then share these discussion with you.