Following environmental crime across the Pacific
Launching in November 2026, Red Quill Society will conduct a hemispheric Pacific expedition — sailing from the Sea of Cortez to Patagonia, with targeted operational phases across the Eastern Tropical Pacific, including a deliberate return to the Galápagos EEZ.
This expedition is designed to follow activity, not geography — tracing how environmental crimes move, hide, and persist across borders.
Phase I: Sea of Cortez — Where Pressure Begins
The expedition launches in the Sea of Cortez, a global biodiversity hotspot and one of the most contested marine regions in the Eastern Pacific.
Focus areas:
- Documentation of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing
- Observation of early-stage transshipment routes
- Monitoring of threatened megafauna corridors
- Interviews with local fishers, scientists, and enforcement-adjacent observers
This phase establishes the baseline: who is operating, how they move, and where accountability quietly weakens.
Phase II: The Central American Pacific Corridor — The Invisible Highway
Between the Sea of Cortez and the Galápagos lies one of the least documented but most heavily exploited maritime corridors on Earth: the Pacific waters off Central America.
This is not empty ocean.
It is infrastructure.
Operational focus includes:
- Long-range observation of vessels transiting between EEZs
- Monitoring of loitering behaviour consistent with transshipment
- Documentation of flag-hopping and AIS manipulation
- Identification of “grey zone” operations exploiting jurisdictional seams
- Story capture from coastal communities affected by distant offshore activity
This phase makes the distance visible — exposing the ocean not as a void, but as a highway for extraction, laundering, and silence.
Phase III: Galápagos EEZ — Unfinished Business
Midway through the southbound route, the expedition returns to the Galápagos EEZ.
Not symbolically.
Operationally.
This is where Red Quill Society’s 2025 work was forcibly interrupted by pirate activity. The return is intentional and central to the mission.
Objectives include:
- Completing interrupted monitoring and documentation
- Observing ongoing illegal fishing pressure near protected waters
- Re-establishing presence in zones abandoned to intimidation
- Publicly closing the loop on an unfinished mission
Criminal actors rely on absence.
This phase denies them that advantage.
Phase IV: The Southern Pacific Descent — Following the Pattern
From the Galápagos, the expedition continues south along the Pacific coast of South America.
Key objectives:
- Pattern tracking of vessels operating across multiple EEZs
- Independent documentation of crimes rarely prosecuted
- Collaboration with regional researchers, journalists, and watchdogs
- Linking activity observed in the north to impacts felt in the south
This is where individual incidents become systems.
Phase V: Patagonia — The Edge of Accountability
Patagonia marks the southern anchor of the expedition — where enforcement thins, ecosystems are fragile, and industrial pressure is relentless.
Work includes:
- Monitoring foreign-flagged fleets near sensitive waters
- Documentation of enforcement asymmetries between nations
- Cold-water biodiversity documentation
- Stories from communities living with the downstream consequences
Patagonia isn’t remote.
It’s where the system runs out of plausible deniability.
Joining the Expedition
Red Quill Society expeditions are not open voyages.
They are mission-driven operations.
Participation is limited to individuals whose skills, experience, or presence directly support the work — including research, documentation, navigation, safety, and communications.
Those who join do so as contributors, not passengers.
Every role carries responsibility.
Every person onboard becomes part of the operational footprint.
If you believe your experience, expertise, or capacity can meaningfully support this expedition — and you are prepared for demanding conditions, long durations, and work far from certainty — you may request consideration.
This is not about adventure.
It is about presence.
Green Earth Initiative
The Core Reality
Environmental crime does not occur at ports.
It occurs between them.
The most damaging illegal fishing, transshipment, trafficking, and intimidation activity happens in long, under-observed maritime corridors — far from cameras, far from enforcement, and far from public scrutiny.
These spaces are often described as “empty ocean.”
They are not empty.
They are unwatched.
Red Quill Society’s operational presence is intentionally focused on these zones.
Why Presence Matters
Criminal maritime operations depend on three conditions:
- Distance from witnesses
- Jurisdictional ambiguity
- Predictable absence of scrutiny
Our work exists to break all three.
Presence alone — a documented, independent vessel operating where none are expected — changes behaviour. It disrupts routines, alters routes, and introduces uncertainty into systems that rely on invisibility.
We are not enforcement.
We are the thing criminals don’t plan for.
Operational Risk: Acknowledged, Not Avoided
Red Quill Society operates in regions where risk is real and documented, including:
- Areas with known piracy or intimidation history
- Zones of heavy illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing
- Corridors used for covert transshipment and flag laundering
- Waters with limited or inconsistent enforcement coverage
Risk is not incidental to this work — it is intrinsic to it.
Avoiding risk would mean avoiding the very places where evidence matters most.
Why Sailing the Distance Is the Work
Between the Sea of Cortez and the Galápagos lies a vast stretch of the Eastern Tropical Pacific that is routinely ignored in conservation narratives.
This corridor functions as:
- A movement highway for vessels evading scrutiny
- A buffer zone between protected areas
- A grey space where accountability dissolves
If we skip it, we miss:
- Pattern continuity
- Behavioural shifts
- Proof of cross-border coordination
Crimes do not begin or end at EEZ boundaries.
They move.
So do we.
The Galápagos Return: Presence as Deterrence
Red Quill Society’s return to the Galápagos EEZ is not symbolic.
It is corrective.
In 2025, pirate activity forced the premature termination of monitoring work. Criminal actors rely on the assumption that intimidation ends stories.
Returning — deliberately, visibly, and operationally — removes that assumption.
Presence communicates continuity. Continuity communicates resolve.
This is deterrence without confrontation.
Why Patagonia Matters
Patagonia represents the southern edge of the same systems observed further north:
- Foreign-flagged fleets operating at scale
- Weak enforcement coordination
- High ecological value, low political attention
By the time impacts are visible here, the decisions were made thousands of miles away.
This expedition documents that chain — end to end.
Risk Mitigation Without Mission Dilution
Risk Mitigation Without Mission Dilution
Risk Mitigation Without Mission Dilution
Red Quill Society manages risk through:
- Operational discretion and non-predictable routing
- Continuous documentation rather than episodic exposure
- Clear non-enforcement posture
- Redundant communications and safety protocols
What we do not do is sanitise the mission to make it comfortable.
Comfort is not where evidence lives.
The Bottom Line
Risk Mitigation Without Mission Dilution
Risk Mitigation Without Mission Dilution
If we only operated where it was safe, we would only document what was already known.
If we only went where enforcement exists, there would be nothing to expose.
Red Quill Society operates in the gaps — because that is where the truth hides.