The Dorka II was Costa Rican-registered, but its crew members were Nicaraguan. The captain, identified only as Salazar, was arrested and later convicted of illegal fishing, and found to already have a lengthy record for \u201cvarious violations of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Law,\u201d according to the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Security<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n While hailed as a success for marine protection, the arrest exposed an uncomfortable contradiction: In the preceding six years, the Dorka II had received 87,667 liters of subsidized fuel from the Costa Rican government\u2019s fisheries department. Forty transfers of tax-exempt fuel had saved the vessel\u2019s owner more than $62,300, according to government records.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Costa Rican state was caught funding its own environmental crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Dorka II encounter was not an isolated incident. A groundbreaking investigation<\/a> by La Naci\u00f3n, one of Costa Rica\u2019s largest newspapers, this year found that in the past decade law enforcement caught 108 subsidized commercial fishing boats illegally poaching, sharkfinning, or entering Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite an international image as a leader of Latin American conservation, Costa Rica\u2019s fisheries fuel subsidy program\u2014costing over $15 million annually\u2014is funding the very marine destruction it claims to prevent through overfishing and poaching. The scandal deepened when La Naci\u00f3n revealed tax-exemptions had also been given to 51 ships implicated in narco-trafficking.\u00a0<\/p>\n Globally, governments hand out $35 billion in fishing subsidies each year. Of these, roughly $22 billion have been categorized as harmful in the way they artificially strengthen fishing capacity by offsetting the costs of fuel, gear or boat construction, according to the United Nations Trade and Development<\/a> board. That money accelerates the rate at which the world\u2019s waters are running out of fish.<\/p>\n The problem of subsidies is not limited to national waters like those where the majority of Costa Rican ships operate. Most of the world\u2019s high-seas fishing fleets would be unprofitable were it not for government subsidies, according to a 2018 study<\/a> by Enric Sala, founder of the Pristine Seas project, an initiative to protect marine habitats by the nonprofit National Geographic Society. Among the countries that most heavily subsidize their fishing fleets are the United States, Spain and China, the report found.<\/p>\n These subsidies now support a global fishing fleet 2.5 times bigger than the sustainable limit, according to the WWF<\/a>. \u201cFuel subsidies reduce the natural economic limits that normally help control fishing efforts,\u201d said Dami\u00e1n Martin\u00e9z-Fernandez, conservation director at the Costa Rican Fishing Federation (FECOP). \u201cCheaper fuel may unintentionally allow fishing effort to stay high even as the resource declines,\u201d he said. Costa Rican subsidies have helped double commercial landings of sailfish in recent years, despite population estimates having halved, Martin\u00e9z-Fernandez said.<\/p>\n Rapid depletion of fish stocks is not just an ecological disaster. It is a critical but often-overlooked component of the climate crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n The ocean is the world\u2019s largest carbon sink, and healthy fish populations are essential to the process to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere. Large apex predators like tuna or whales provide nutrients to plankton that produce oxygen and store significant sums of carbon in their biomass. By increasing the rate of marine life destruction, subsidies weaken the planet\u2019s natural defenses against climate change.<\/p>\n Costa Rica ratified the World Trade Organization\u2019s September 2025 Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies<\/a> aimed at reducing overfishing harms. However, arrest timelines show the problem worsened last year, when Costa Rican authorities intercepted 18 subsidized boats for illegal fishing, double the average for the three previous years.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the Costa Rican Agricultural Affairs Committee recently called for improved policing of who receives subsidies, over 1.9 million liters of subsidized fuel had gone, over the last decade, into the tanks of those boats caught poaching in 2024. Taxpayers had lost over $1.1 million to ocean exploitation.\u00a0<\/p>\n An analysis of Costa Rica\u2019s Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture records by Inside Climate News found $62 million of government-subsidized fuel, designed to support small-scale fishing, has gone to Costa Rica\u2019s largest and most industrial fishing vessels since 2015. Over the last decade, the analysis shows, nearly half of all subsidized fuel has gone to 13 percent of all ships registered in the country. These boats play a significant role in depleting tuna, mahi-mahi and shark stocks at alarming rates, according to research published in 2025 in Frontiers in Marine Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n Averaging 22 days<\/a> per trip, these 300 or so ships target large pelagic fish\u2014those swimming in open waters\u2014using longlining, a technique known for its high level of bycatch. Between 1999 and 2010, Costa Rica\u2019s longliners, using this technique, inadvertently caught and killed an estimated 700,000 endangered Olive Ridley turtles, as well as silky sharks, stingrays and sailfish, according to a 2013 study from the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Coinciding with warming waters, this fishing approach is producing a compounding ecological effect. As greenhouse gas emissions warm the Pacific Ocean, commercially valuable tuna stocks are moving poleward, forcing subsidized fleets to undertake longer, more carbon-intensive trips to plunder previously unfished grounds. A policy intended to support small-scale coastal fishermen is instead subsidizing large-scale ecological harm.<\/p>\n Geography too plays a role. The very elements that make Costa Rica so well suited to marine ecotourism are also what makes it uniquely vulnerable to such state-sponsored plundering.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Costa Rica Thermal Dome\u2014an oceanographic phenomenon 200 to 600 miles off its Pacific Coast\u2014draws colder, nutrient-rich water to the nation\u2019s shores, attracting high-value fisheries like yellowfin and skipjack tuna. The country also has a designated exclusive economic zone\u2014coastal areas and waters protected by international law\u2014that is 11 times the size of its land mass.\u00a0<\/p>\n Costa Rica abolished its armed forces over 75 years ago and without a Navy to protect it, its waters have become relatively easy to violate. Cheap fuel, through the subsidy program, encourages industry fishermen to loot remote marine areas hundreds of miles offshore, according to the Center for Latin American & Latino Studies<\/a> at American University in Washington, D.C.\u00a0<\/p>\n Harmful subsidies appear to be outpacing marine policing. In August 2022, the Costa Rican Coast Guard spotted the use of illegal gillnets in the brackish estuary off the Gulf of Nicoya\u2019s Berrugate Island. As authorities approached, two fishermen performed dangerous evasive maneuvers whipping up the muddy water. After a brief chase, the Coast Guard pinned the small boat against an embankment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Facing the patrol boat, the men wielded a knife at officers and threatened to set fire to the government vessel, according to local broadcaster Teletica<\/a>. As officers were trying to hook the illegal net from the water, the fishermen slammed on the throttle and fled through the shallow mangrove-filled waters. Government records show that the boat, identified as the Arilis-B, had received 18,288 liters of subsidized fuel worth $13,000 from 2015 to 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n Costa Rica\u2019s weak enforcement has been criticized on the international stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2021, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported to the U.S. Congress that Costa Rica was \u201cfailing to effectively manage and control its fleet.\u201d The report<\/a> alleged there was harvesting of North Atlantic swordfish without quotas, extensive overfishing of Atlantic white marlin and a failure to submit catch data for tuna.\u00a0<\/p>\n Costa Rica also reacted slowly to threats, critics said. The hammerhead shark population fell by 90 percent<\/a> before the state introduced a 2023 ban on its commercial fishing. Costa Rica lacks the monitoring systems<\/a> to track populations and effectively assess species loss, according to fishing federation FECOP, and failures to rein in excesses belie the nation\u2019s celebrated image as a conservation champion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Decades of Costa Rican subsidies have warped fleet dynamics and undercut livelihoods. While there are an estimated 15,000 fishermen in Costa Rica, only 2,000 are licensed. The remaining 13,000 or so, without the official documentation to receive subsidies, cannot compete with the financially advantaged bigger boats. The industrial fleet floods the market, drives down prices and depletes stocks that squeeze multi-generational fishing communities out of business.\u00a0<\/p>\n In June, small-scale fishermen from the Pacific Coast\u2019s Gulf of Nicoya gathered at a legislative forum to voice their discontent at dwindling corvina, snapper, white mullet and shrimp stocks. \u201cThe situation is about to get chaotic,\u201d a fisherman from Isla Chira told the Tico Times<\/a>. \u201cHunger is going to strike island and coastal communities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the main reasons why marine conservation is not being successful in Costa Rica is because the native, local, small-scale fishing communities are being displaced,\u201d said Vivienne Solis-Rivera, a biologist with the Costa Rican conservation nonprofit CoopeSoliDar. Most small-scale fishers\u2014especially Indigenous, Afro-descendant communities and women working in fish processing\u2014are unlicensed and therefore unable to receive subsidies or compete with industrial fishing fleets, in turn destroying local stewardship, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n This story is funded by readers like you.<\/p>\n Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.<\/p>\n Donate Now<\/a> <\/p>\n To many observers, this is the fundamental injustice of the subsidy program: a taxpayer-supported mechanism that actively disadvantages sustainable fisheries in favor of industrial fleets. \u201cCosta Rica has much more structural issues to solve to make sure we have an equitable and sustainable marine conservation effort,\u201d Solis-Rivera said.<\/p>\n In Costa Rica, studies show that the failures are rooted, in part, in poor bureaucracy. A 2024 audit<\/a> by the Comptroller General\u2019s Office discovered that the Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture (INCOPESCA), which regulates the industry and oversees the program, and the Costa Rican Petroleum Refinery (RECOPE), which provides the fuel, carried out only \u201cweak and scarce\u201d inspections. Of the more than 40 million liters of fuel supplied between January 2023 and April 2024, over half of transactions had irregularities including incomplete documentation and allocations far exceeding a vessel\u2019s capacity, the audit found.\u00a0<\/p>\n In one notable example, INCOPESCA approved for two boats with similar engines and requirements vastly different amounts: 6,875 liters for one; 19,327 liters for the other. \u201cThere is a risk that fuel provided at a competitive price is being used for illicit activities,\u201d the audit said, criticizing INCOPESCA.\u00a0<\/p>\n INCOPESCA did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n However, the state-funded program has subsidized more than just illegal fishing. Recent arrests of INCOPESCA officials suggest it may have been involved in international illicit drug smuggling.<\/p>\n In November, a former INCOPESCA Director and the head of fuels for the central Caribbean region were arrested<\/a> in a raid tied to the so-called South Caribbean Cartel, what officials described as a transnational drug network, according to reporting by news outlet CR Hoy. They are among about 30 people facing prosecution for the transport of cocaine through contacts in Costa Rica and across Latin America, the United States and Europe, according to local media reports. They were charged with money laundering and allegedly using their positions to aid the cartel\u2019s receipt of subsidized fuel for its fleet of drug smuggling boats, CR Hoy reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n The raid occurred as Gilbert Bell Fern\u00e1ndez, a separate alleged drug kingpin in Costa Rica, awaits extradition<\/a> to the United States. Bell Fern\u00e1ndez was the recipient of 2.1 million liters of subsidized gasoline from INCOPESCA, according to La Naci\u00f3n, and his arrest has triggered broader hand-wringing about how the fuel subsidy program has funded boats involved in narco-trafficking.<\/p>\n The case of the Dorka II underscores serious flaws in the fuel subsidy program beyond high profile arrests. Despite the criminal conviction of the boat\u2019s captain in 2022, its owner, Jose Daniel Toledo Estrada, received at least 12 subsidies totaling $19,000 in savings after that point, according to INCOPESCA records. Inside Climate News was unable to reach Toledo Estrada for comment.<\/p>\n![\"Costa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Policia-captura-a-extranjeros-qu.jpg\"\/)
Costa Rican authorities search the Dorka II\u2019s coolers. Caught illegally poaching in the Guanacaste Conservation Area, the vessel is just one of 108 subsidized vessels arrested for illegal poaching in the past 10 years. Credit: Ministry of Public Security<\/p>\n