Tristan da Cunha: The lobsters keeping Earth’s remotest town afloat
Nick Schönfeld for the BBC
The most remote inhabited island is racing to protect its seas – and only source of income.
The fishing gong is calling. At 05:00 local time, the clang of a hammer on an old oxygen gas cylinder wakes me up. It’s fishing day on Tristan da Cunha, a speck of land in the South Atlantic Ocean that is home to barely more than 200 people. Beyond the UK Overseas Territory, the nearest inhabited settlement lies more than 2,400km (1,491 miles) away.
As the gong fades, dogs bark, engines rev, and the scrape of rubber boots echoes through the air as fishermen head to Callshot Harbor, nicknamed “the Beach”, to bait their traps and ready their boats. With just 18 to 72 fishing days per season, every opportunity counts.
They’re after Tristan’s most valuable commodity: the St Paul spiny lobster (Jasus paulensis), found only near remote islands in the world’s southern oceans. Prized for their sweet, delicate meat, a single tail can fetch $39 (£29) on the US market. The lobsters are also sold in Japan and the UK. Here in the cool, temperate waters of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, the crustaceans thrive close to shore, at depths of up to 200m (656 ft).
But Tristan has not always been able to depend on its lobster bounty. Decades ago, heavy fishing caused a significant reduction in lobster numbers here. Today, Tristanians depend on the catch – but they also know that, without proper protections, the lobsters are at risk.
HH the Administrator Mr Philip Kendall, left and Mr James Glass, Director of Fisheries, right.
“We have always relied on the ocean as a source of food, managing it to the best of our abilities. Which means not taking more than you need,” says James Glass, head of Tristan da Cunha’s Department of Fisheries. “This is a precious place, and we want it to stay that way.”
“It’s our livelihood. Without the ocean, our community wouldn’t function,” says fisherman Shane Green.
Now, as the world’s oceans face mounting pressures, and climate change, invasive species and illegal industrial fishing threaten both the marine ecosystem and the island’s main source of income, the people of Tristan da Cunha are determined to ensure the spiny lobsters’, and their own, long-term survival.
The island’s fishermen work in the middle of the world’s fifth-largest marine protected zone (MPZ) which covers an area of 687,000 sq km (265,252 sq miles). In 91% of Tristan’s territorial waters, commercial fishing is entirely banned. In the remaining zones, strict quotas, size limits, and onboard monitoring apply, with satellite surveillance helping to detect and deter illegal activity.
Jason Green and his fishing partner, Dean Repetto, have sailed together for a decade. Like most Tristanians, their ancestral connection to the sea dates back more than a century.
“Fishing has been passed down through my family for generations,” says Repetto, who also works as a mechanic for Tristan’s Department of Fisheries.
On a fine day in January 2024, Dean, Jason and their apprentice Tristan Glass, head out to sea in Island Pride, their 8m (27ft) bright-orange boat. Leaving Tristan’s tiny harbour, they head east, weaving through offshore forests of giant kelp, towering brown algae that can grow over half a metre per day and reach 45m (150ft) in length.
They’re headed to their mark, a fishing spot on the southern side of the island that fishermen here can identify through triangulation of landmarks and the depth of the ocean at certain locations.
“It could be a pinnacle, it could be like a gulch, it could be a hut or a hill, and you line one up with the other one,” says Eugene Repetto, who fishes on the Kingfisher.
On the Island Pride, the apprentice Glass’ face growing pale – the hallmark of seasickness. It’s an especially tough job for some.
As Glass sleeps off his symptoms, Green drops 16 large traps in deep water. He will leave them for hours – long enough for lobsters to find the bait. Then, Repetto steers for shallower water, where Green lowers hoop nets with which to snare lobsters in the underwater kelp forests. They haul these nets aboard every hour. Before heading back to harbour, they will retrieve their catch from the deeper traps set earlier.
Omnivorous and clawless, Tristan’s lobsters use their long antennae to navigate the rocky seabed, feeding at night on sea urchins, molluscs, and other kelp-consuming invertebrates. This helps to sustain the underwater forests that shelter many other marine species. Spiny lobsters are a vital link in the food web, scavenging dead animals and organic matter, recycling nutrients, and serving as prey for predators including octopus.
The people of Tristan da Cunha, all 229 of them, live in extreme isolation, surrounded by millions of square kilometres of open ocean. Their closest inhabited neighbour, St Helena – where Napoleon lived out the last of his days – lies 2,414 km (1,500 miles) to the north. Montevideo, Uruguay, is 4,023 km (2,500 miles) west. To the south, only a scattering of uninhabited islands separates Tristan from the icy wilderness of Antarctica.
The only regularly used route to Tristan – from Cape Town, South Africa – is unreliable. Securing one of just 136 berths on one of nine annual ships is only the start. The 2,819 km (1,752 mile) journey can take up to two weeks, depending on the weather.
I spent 10 months on Tristan with the photographer Julia Gunther, from December 2023 to October 2024. When we first arrived, heavy swells closed the harbour, forcing us to wait five days aboard a ship offshore before we could finally land.
The island’s only settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, has no airport, hotels, or restaurants. What it does have in abundance are towering cliffs, a strong sense of community and a vast expanse of pristine ocean. Isolation, and strong survival instincts, have shaped every aspect of life here.
Commercial fishing arrived on Tristan during the 1940s and, since then, lobster has been the cornerstone of the island’s economy. Spiny lobsters even feature in Tristan’s coat of arms.
“The lobsters used to be so abundant people could walk to the rock pools at low tide and catch them,” says James Glass.
While there is no conclusive evidence yet – largely due to the limited number of studies – there are signs that climate change could have serious consequences for Tristan’s marine environment. One study shows that rising sea temperatures are already affecting the summer growth of kelp – a crucial habitat for lobsters – and, that warming seas could also push lobsters further south, beyond the island’s reach.
It’s our livelihood. Without the ocean, our community wouldn’t function – Shane Green
Cheseldon Lavarello, now 82, tells me of the enormous catches he helped bring ashore when he first went to sea aged 15: “My fishing partner and I could catch 1,360kg (3,000lb) in a day using just 10 nets.”
In the early days, the fishery was barely regulated, James Glass recalls. Undersized lobsters and egg-bearing females were often taken before they had a chance to reproduce. It wasn’t until 1983 that the Island Council brought in size limits. A quota followed in 1991– though, according to James Glass, neither was strictly enforced until 1997.
The biggest fishing entity on the island at the time of our 2024 visit was the firm Ovenstone Agencies, which held the concession to harvest a large quota of spiny lobsters – roughly 800,000 annually as well as 110 tonnes of Antarctic butterfish or bluenose (Hyperoglyphe antarctica). The South African company provides employment, electricity for the island, and cargo and passenger transport by ship, including medical evacuations, to Cape Town.
From August 2023 to April 2024, Ovenstone’s main fishing vessel, the MFV Edinburgh, fished around the nearby islands of Nightingale, Inaccessible and Gough, landing an estimated 316 tonnes – most of the island’s 441-tonne annual catch. Tristanian Fisheries observers accompanied every trip, measuring hundreds of lobsters daily. The catch was processed, packed and frozen on-board for shipment to Cape Town.
“Ovenstone has an exclusive license. It’s very strict,” says Philip Kendall, Tristan’s UK Administrator. “They’re obliged to report exactly what they’ve caught.”
Local fishermen such as Jason Green, in smaller boats, landed the remaining part of the quota, up to 125 tonnes.
“We must have measuring sticks on hand to check for undersized lobsters…and each boat must not go over the correct number of nets and traps,” says Green.
Throughout the year, the Fisheries Department tags lobsters, tracks their movements, and uses underwater cameras to monitor the creatures’ health. “The random samples and biomass data helps us understand the fish stocks,” says Sarah Glass-Green, an officer at Tristan’s Fisheries Department.
Despite its extreme isolation, Tristan da Cunha is not immune to the kinds of environmental pressures faced by other communities closer to home.
The island lies on a busy shipping route, and, as global trade expanded during the late 20th Century, so too has the chance of a single major marine catastrophe devastating the island’s fishery.
A series of environmental shocks during the late 2000s exposed just how vulnerable the marine environment is.
In June 2006, for example, a group of Tristanians out at sea spotted a massive floating oil platform, PXXI, washed up at Trypot Point, an inaccessible stretch of the island that has sheer cliffs rising 500m (1,640ft) from a narrow, boulder-strewn beach. PXXI had been cut loose from its tug a month earlier while being towed from Brazil to Singapore.
Shane Green remembers seeing the platform for the first time while fishing with his grandfather. “We were coming around the reef at Sandy Point, and I saw it. It looked just like a small hotel. Later, we went right underneath it with the boat. It had barnacles all up its sides. When you looked up, it was like you were under a skyscraper.”
While there was no oil spill, PXXI briefly introduced 62 non-native species. One, the silver porgy (Diplodus argenteus) – an omnivorous reef fish from South America – has since spread to three islands in the archipelago, with only Gough currently remaining porgy-free.
Around Tristan, porgy now compete with native species for food and habitat. A juvenile lobster was found in the stomach of a porgy, raising concerns for the fishery. Its impact on Tristan’s marine life is now the focus of a study at the University of Exeter in the UK, with a student set to spend four months on Tristan to study the porgy’s spread and interactions with lobster more closely.
In March 2011, the MS Oliva ran aground on Nightingale Island, spilling 65,000 tonnes of soybeans and fuel. Thousands of northern rockhopper penguins and other seabirds died. The fishery at Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands closed temporarily.
Despite events like this, scientific expeditions, including National Geographic’s Pristine Seas in 2017, led by Paul Rose, found an abundance of wildlife seemingly unperturbed by commercial fishing or past ecological disasters.
Rose and his team conducted the first in-depth survey of the island’s marine life, using scuba dives, deep-sea cameras and satellite tagging. It confirmed what many islanders already knew: Tristan’s seas are among the most pristine on Earth, home to globally significant seabird colonies, shark nurseries and vast kelp forests.
But the survey also underscored a growing anxiety: how long could this remarkably healthy marine environment remain intact?
The environmental incidents and survey data together also raised a deeper question around how Tristan might protect its waters for the future without sacrificing its all-important fishery. The idea of a total fishing ban, for instance, was anathema. The entire community here depends on the catch for survival, and a ban would not stop future disasters or near misses, most of which have been caused by transiting vessels, not fishing. And what if outside entities, including the UK Government, imposed a marine protected zone that ignored local needs?
“Tristan had a unique opportunity to take the lead in the creation of its marine protected zone,” says Andy Schofield, who leads the overseas territories work for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a UK wildlife conservation non-profit.
Between 2017 and 2019, Tristan’s government, the Island Council, fishery operators, and conservation scientists worked out a plan. “We needed to tell [the UK], ‘This is what Tristan wants,'” says Schofield.
The final design, adopted in 2019, drew heavily on local knowledge. The MPZ covered 687,000 sq km (265,252 sq miles), with 91% of Tristan da Cunha’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) closed entirely to fishing. Crucially, it allowed for a designated inshore fishing zone for the commercial lobster fishery, preserving the island’s economic lifeline. The plan also created “Areas to Be Avoided” (ATBAs) for shipping, reducing the risk of accidents near sensitive habitats.
“Local and global economies go hand-in-hand with MPZs,” says Rose. “More protection equals more fish.”
Tristan also began sending representatives abroad.
“Our waters are a safe haven for wildlife,” says Janine Lavarello, Tristan da Cunha’s marine protection zone officer. “We want people to understand that if our small community can set up this huge marine protection zone, imagine what bigger countries can achieve.”
Identifying and designating marine protected areas, however, is comparatively easy to policing and enforcing them.
Tristan is the only UK Overseas Territory without its own dedicated vessel or airport. Instead, it relies on satellite tracking and global networks to police nearly 700,000 sq km (270,270 sq miles) of ocean.
“You can’t protect what you can’t see. Satellite monitoring fills that visibility gap, playing a pivotal role in… safeguarding remote marine ecosystems,” says Monica Esponiza Miralles, head of Latin America for Global Fishing Watch, an international non-profit.
The UK’s Marine Management Organisation supports Tristan’s MPZ by interpreting data from Automatic Identification Systems to flag vessels behaving suspiciously, such as slowing or drifting in a no-take zone. If a vessel’s AIS is switched off or it circles repeatedly in a small area, the MMO alerts Tristan’s UK Administrator.
Yet Tristan cannot physically intercept violators; it only has a small patrol boat, the Wave Dancer, with a range of 300 miles (483km). To complicate matters, the island has no coast guard. “If we break down, there’d be no one to come and rescue us,” says James Glass.
In 2019, the MV Nika – flagged to Panama and falsely claiming to be a cargo ship – was spotted inside South Georgia’s MPZ carrying fishing gear. Tracked to South East Asia, it was impounded in Indonesia with support from Interpol; its captain was arrested, and its Panamanian registration revoked.
“Fundamentally, an MPZ without the ability to patrol is not going to have the outcomes that you would wish,” says Mark Belchier, marine ecologist and science manager at the British Antarctic Survey, who helped track the MV Nika. A fully equipped vessel would cost millions each year, beyond Tristan’s means.
Glass wants Tristan to have its own ship. “At the moment, there’s no deterrent,” he says. “We rely entirely on the UK Government to do the patrolling for us.”
Still, for now, the MPZ seems to be holding. MMO analyst Jason Garthwaite says MPZ compliance is high, with no confirmed cases of illegal fishing.
Generally, ships appear to be giving Tristan an increasingly wide berth, however. According to figures provided by the MMO, seen by the BBC, in 2019 – the year before the MPZ was established – 14% of vessels transiting Tristan da Cunha’s waters passed within 25 nautical miles (46.3km) of one of the islands. The same data shows that by 2023, that figure had dropped to 2%, and overall traffic inside MPZ has fallen by more than 20% since 2020.
While there have been no confirmed incursions into Tristan’s MPZ since monitoring began that have led to fines or convictions, the MMO’s July 2025 vessel surveillance update, seen by the BBC, shows the island’s waters remain under constant pressure. Two vessels appear to have entered the archipelago’s ATBAs; one dropped off AIS less than 200 nautical miles (370.4km) outside the MPZ, and a bluefin tuna fleet of five vessels fished within 25 nautical miles of its boundary.
Tristan’s ocean is something we must look after. Because, without it, we’re gone – Cheseldon Lavarello
Although a vessel dropping off AIS does not necessarily indicate illegal fishing – gaps can result from technical faults or limited satellite coverage – it is suspicious, especially near rich fishing grounds like those around Tristan da Cunha.
At 08:30 local time on a cold Sunday morning in early July 2024, bells ring out from St Mary’s Anglican church, where fishing nets and traps are arranged around the altar. It is Sea Sunday, the final service before the new lobster season begins. It will be the 75th season since Tristan’s first canning factory opened in 1949. The congregation prays for calm seas and safe returns, as fishermen and factory workers line up for a blessing from Reverend Margaret.
Shane Green is there, with his daughter, Savanna, who loves to join him at sea during the school holidays. The Repetto family also attends – Eugene’s wife Kirsty plays the organ.
Fishing is deeply embedded in life and culture on the island. Tristanians learned a long time ago that taking from their ocean also means needing to protect it. But it’s 82-year-old Lavarello who puts it most succinctly, when I go to visit him in his island home.
“Tristan’s ocean is something we must look after,” he says, watching the wind whip spray off the expanse of blue stretching to the horizon. “Because, without it, we’re gone.”
Reporting for this story was supported with funding from the Pulitzer Center.
