Photographer Nicole Tung uses her camera to expose powerful, important stories from the hidden world of Southeast Asia’s fishing industry, shining a light on the industry’s human and environmental costs.
Nicole Tung, a freelance photojournalist born in Hong Kong and based between assignments worldwide, has built a career on documenting some of the most urgent and difficult stories of our time. Her work, often centered on conflict and humanitarian crises, has appeared in leading international publications and supported NGOs on the ground.
This year, she was named the laureate of the 15th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, an honor that marks both a new chapter in her career and a shift in focus to the intersection of human rights and environmental decline.
In collaboration with the Fondation Carmignac team, Nicole Tung shared insights into this award-winning project with PetaPixel.
About the Carmignac Photojournalism Award
Created in 2009, the Carmignac Photojournalism Award funds the production of long-term investigative projects that shed light on underreported issues worldwide. Each year, the Foundation selects a geographic region and theme, offering laureates not only financial support but also editorial freedom and logistical assistance. Unlike many other awards, the Carmignac Award is not given for completed projects. Instead, it is specifically designed to enable journalists to carry out new work. For security reasons, the laureate is officially announced only once the reporting has been completed.
Tung’s project on illegal fishing and labor abuses in Southeast Asia was made possible through this support. The award allowed her to spend nine months in the field across Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, documenting a hidden industry where ecological devastation and human exploitation often remain out of public sight.
A New Direction
For Tung, the recognition also represented a meaningful departure from her usual focus on conflict zones, where her work has often centered on documenting the toll of war and displacement. Shifting to an environmental story meant not only engaging with a new subject matter but also rethinking her visual and narrative approach.
“I am extremely honored, and what it represents for my work is something quite different in the sense that it is not about conflict. It opened up a whole different set of challenges for me because I had to think differently about how to approach the subject of overfishing, to visualize its impact on the environment, and to understand the cost on human lives of the food we consume,” Tung says.
This shift required her to slow down, immerse herself in communities, and develop trust with those whose stories are often invisible to the outside world. Instead of the immediacy of frontline reporting, the project required patience, long-term observation, and a thorough examination of systemic issues rather than sudden events. For Tung, the award provided the space and support to expand her storytelling practice, applying the same empathy and rigor she has brought to conflict coverage to the urgent questions of environmental justice and human rights at sea.
Investigating an Opaque Industry
Her reporting took her to Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, three countries at the heart of global fishing supply chains and simultaneously among the most affected by illegal practices. Industrial-scale fishing, she found, not only depletes fish stocks and threatens biodiversity but also depends on exploitative labor practices that often remain invisible to consumers.
“It was meeting with fishermen who had been recruited to work on Chinese vessels, and hearing the stories of the abuse they witnessed and endured, that stayed with me. It made me realize that we accept these invisible costs of the seafood we eat at our peril, precisely because they remain hidden from public view,” Tung recalls.
Access to the industry is notoriously limited, especially at sea, where operations are shielded from oversight. Tung approached the subject by tracing the interconnections between environmental destruction, forced labor, and geopolitics. Her photographs document both the human toll on migrant laborers and the ecological collapse driven by destructive fishing methods.
Balancing Human and Environmental Stories
For Tung, separating environmental degradation from human rights abuses is impossible, as the two crises are intertwined at every level of the fishing industry. The depletion of marine life is not just an ecological issue but also a human one, with exploitation and abuse woven into the same system that strips the seas of their resources.
“Industrial scale fishing is contributing to the rapid decline of fish stocks because of the sheer volume it removes from the sea without sustainable methods to allow fish to replenish. What drives that, however, is the exploitation of labor. Vessels are under pressure to catch as much as possible in the shortest time, and it is not profitable for them to pay people fairly or treat them with dignity,” Tung says.
Her reporting reflects this inseparability, spanning multiple facets of the industry that together form a complex and often opaque network. In the Philippines, she examined the tuna trade, a cornerstone of the global seafood economy, where the path from small coastal canneries to international markets reveals the difficulty in tracing the origins of what ends up on plates around the world. In Indonesia, she investigated the shark industry, where meat is sold locally but fins and bones are exported for cosmetics and traditional medicine, highlighting how global demand fuels local exploitation. Across the region, she documented the working conditions of crews, many of whom are migrant laborers trapped in cycles of debt, withheld wages, and, at times, violence aboard vessels operating far from oversight.
Each layer of her reporting adds to a broader picture of supply chains that are vast, transnational, and largely untraceable to consumers. By weaving together environmental loss with human suffering, Tung underscores how the seafood industry’s hidden costs are borne both by the oceans and the people who work within them.
The Role of Photojournalism
Tung believes that images can act as reminders of ongoing issues even when the facts are not new. Overfishing, illegal and unreported practices, and abuses at sea have been documented for years, but she argues that photography can play a crucial role in keeping pressure on governments and corporations to change.
“Reminders of these abuses can be important and powerful. Though some countries have made improvements, there is still a long way to go. I hope these images can serve as a reminder of the lengths to which governments and commercial companies still need to improve,” she says.
Looking Forward
Though she has spent years working in war zones, Nicole Tung says she hopes to continue pursuing stories that address climate change, environmental justice, and the human cost of ecological collapse. The Carmignac-supported project, she feels, has only scratched the surface of what remains to be uncovered.
“I hope I can continue this project in some capacity at some point. There is so much more to explore in this dark and opaque industry that far too often disregards the fact that the catch in the sea is not infinite,” Tung says.
As Southeast Asia’s waters grow ever more contested, the balance between human livelihoods and ecological survival becomes increasingly urgent. For Nicole Tung, photography is not only about bearing witness but about ensuring that the hidden costs of everyday consumption are brought into public view.
Image credits: Nicole Tung, Carmignac Photojournalism Award, Chris McGrath
