More than a million tonnes of tuna were caught in the Indian Ocean in 2020. Years of rampant overfishing has resulted in catches of valuable yellowfin tuna now needing to be reduced by almost a third in order for the stock to recover by 2030. Despite this, the region’s most rapacious yellowfin harvester – the EU – is proposing that no further catch reductions be made this year, contrary to scientific advice. This kind of noncompliance – with the science and with the various laws, conventions and regulations that exist to monitor and control fishing in the region – makes up the focus of this report.  One such set of regulations are those that prevent foreign vessels from fishing within the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of coastal states without authorisation. This report details several instances of likely unauthorised fishing on the part of distant-water, EU-owed purse seine vessels in the EEZs of Indian Ocean coastal states. In addition to the EU’s so-called Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements (SFPAs), which subsidise EU vessels to fish in the waters of third countries (often at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost), there also exist opaque and highly controversial private access agreements made between fishing companies and coastal state governments. In this report, Blue Investigations, together with global investigations firm Kroll, has compared the fishing activity identified in the waters of coastal states to an analysis of the access agreements (both “sustainable” and private) that exist in the Western Indian Ocean. This comparison has highlighted potential noncompliance with national and international regulations by Spanish-owned fleets which appear to have spent time fishing in the waters of both India and Somalia without authorisation.