Oceana Campaigns in the Face of Online Attack
Along Peru’s southern coast, where wind-sculpted desert meets the Pacific Ocean, lies one of the country’s most iconic natural treasures: Paracas National Reserve. Here, sightseers watch sea lions sprawl across sunlit rocks, penguins dart through cold waters, and dolphins leap out of the ocean current.
But threats cast a shadow on the idyllic scene. A legal appeal filed by Peru’s National Fishing Society could allow destructive industrial fishing vessels inside Paracas — and all marine protected areas in Peru. Industrial fishing is already allowed inside the Nazca Ridge National Reserve — the largest reserve in the country.
Paracas and Nazca Ridge represent the growing tensions between the promise of marine protection and the threats facing it. And with their fate hanging in the balance, a campaign of deception began to take shape.
Muddying the waters
In early April 2025, just a few weeks after a court in Lima heard a case brought by Oceana that would determine if industrial vessels can keep fishing in Nazca Ridge, a series of industry-friendly articles hit the press.
The Peruvian business daily Gestión published an article on April 8 with the headline, “Coexistence Between Industrial Fishing and Protected Natural Areas: Experts Support It.” The piece cited a statement signed by 430 “fisheries stakeholders” who insisted that industrial activity posed no real threat to marine protected areas like Paracas and Nazca Ridge.
What Gestión didn’t report in the story was that at least 300 of the signatures were crew members working aboard ships owned by Peru’s seven largest anchovy companies, all part of the National Fisheries Society. Other names on the list included individuals employed by or with close ties to the industrial fishing sector. Later in the week, the same statement reappeared in Perú 21, this time as a two-page spread, reportedly worth over $30,000 USD in ad value.
A well-funded and highly-coordinated disinformation campaign had begun. But it soon took a turn, moving from promoting unscientific claims about marine protected areas to targeting the industry’s adversaries. Namely, Oceana.
Exactly one week after the article in Gestión, on April 15, new accounts with the same name, “Anchoveteros del Perú” (Anchovy Fishers of Peru), appeared on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube. They posted slick videos featuring fishers who accused Oceana and its leadership of being against the Peruvian people.
One video claimed: “We, the anchovy fishermen, respond to the lies of the NGO Oceana…What they want is to destroy us and favor others.” The video comment sections exploded with fake accounts and bots attacking Oceana and its employees.
As the campaign escalated, far-right figures amplified the message. On X, the extremist group La Resistencia reposted one of Anchoveteros’ attacks with the caption: “You have our support. Your fight is ours. Discard the campaign of lies from the caviar NGOs and the disgusting people who join them.”
From April through July, Oceana’s team in Peru was inundated with hostile messages. “Every day, we received new notifications. Thousands of tweets, posts, and comments attacking Oceana,” one Oceana team member recalls.
“Every Sunday night, they’d post a new video on TikTok and pay to promote it. And every time, the message was the same: Oceana is a threat to Peru.”
According to Oceana’s team, the digital smear campaign was far more aggressive and personal than past negative media coverage. Posts targeted the reputation of Vice President for Peru, Daniel Olivares, who is now based in Washington, D.C. and whose political background as a former congressman in Peru made him an “easy target.”
“They shifted from misinformation to attacking Daniel’s character,” a team member said. “They accused him of corrupt interests and began pushing this idea that Oceana was a foreign NGO threatening Peru’s national sovereignty. It was a hate campaign.”
“They wanted me to lash out,” says Olivares. “They were baiting me, trying to provoke a public fight. But the real issue was always about marine protected areas. We weren’t going to let them change the narrative with fear tactics and lies.”
Debunking disinformation
The exact trigger for the attacks is unclear. Perhaps, whoever is behind the smear campaign — a group with strong ties to the industrial fishing industry — decided to take a more aggressive approach after they struggled to counter broad public support for marine protected areas. (Ninety-eight percent of Peruvians believe the country needs more protected natural areas, according to an Oceana-commissioned study).
Or, the attacks could have been timed to influence the outcome of Oceana’s pending lawsuit, which threatens industrial fishing in Nazca Ridge. Another theory points to opportunism: following Peru’s recent passage of anti-NGO legislation, some actors may have seized the political moment to sway public opinion against the organization.
Carmen Heck, Oceana’s Deputy Vice President in Peru, believes it could have been a combination of all three. But regardless of the primary motivation, she says, the strategy was clear: Shift the conversation from science and policy to disinformation about Oceana.
Despite the pressure, Oceana’s team stayed focused on their campaign, urging allies to amplify the truth and refocus public debate on protecting Paracas and Nazca. In response, more than 70 scientists signed a public statement highlighting the dangers of industrial fishing in marine protected areas, while 30 artisanal fishing organizations in Peru released their own statement rejecting industrial fishing in these reserves.
In July, escalating digital disinformation reached new levels of concern as trolls and bots intensified their efforts. Oceana’s team started receiving death threats. “We knew these were coming from fake accounts, but it was scary. We had to take extra security precautions in our daily lives,” says the Oceana team member.
The next day, Olivares boarded a flight to Peru.
Bursting the bubble
Despite the ferocity of the online blitz, the disinformation campaign played out largely within a small, isolated online bubble — mostly unnoticed by the wider public.
When Olivares arrived in Peru and reached out to journalists at established publications, he found that most hadn’t heard about the online attacks. He gave interviews on the condition that stories focus on the real issue: industrial fishing in protected areas. Oceana’s team secured coverage for the issue in many of Peru’s top news outlets.
Meanwhile, those behind the disinformation campaign presumably hoped their videos and reposts by popular right-wing influencers would catch the attention of mainstream media, Heck says. But even conservative outlets — typically sympathetic to the industrial fishing industry — showed little interest.
“People didn’t believe them. That’s why the smear campaign failed,” says Heck. “There seemed to be an agency behind the videos of fishermen claiming Oceana was destroying their livelihoods. It appeared to be a high-budget production, and it was obvious the ‘Anchoveteros of Peru’ account wasn’t run by real fishers.”
The campaign fits into a broader trend: Since 2019, social media manipulation has surged dramatically. An Oxford report revealed that nearly $60 million has been spent on firms deploying bots and other amplification tactics to manufacture the appearance of trending political messages.
Today, campaigners face not only powerful industries and entrenched institutions but also thousands of “cyber troops” — armies of bot accounts engineered to distort and control public conversation.
By early July, the social media posts grew less frequent, and the vitriol in the comments faded. “They’re no longer attacking us with lies or money, or making personal accusations,” Heck says, though she warns these efforts could be revived in the future.
“The hardest part right now is not knowing when the court will make a decision, or when this will be over,” says another Oceana team member. “What we do know is their efforts didn’t succeed. Our supporters remain steadfast, and the disinformation never reached the scale our opponents hoped for.”
A new environment
In 2025, Peru’s Congress passed a law that severely limits the ability of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to act, prohibiting them from taking legal action against the Peruvian state or assisting others in doing so.
“Our lawsuit against the Peruvian government to stop industrial fishing in the Nazca Ridge was filed in 2023 — but today, such a case would be impossible to pursue,” says Heck. Any future efforts to provide financial or legal support to artisanal fishers defending their rights will be prohibited under this new legislation.
The increased scrutiny towards international NGOs is a global trend, as organizations face growing legal, political, and financial pressures, especially in countries with authoritarian or populist tendencies. Globally, more than 50 countries have legislation restricting foreign NGOs or foreign funding.
Campaigning in a climate of online manipulation and new legal restrictions, Oceana’s team in Peru is moving carefully and strategically. “A key lesson from this disinformation campaign is that our strategies should always be focused on the underlying issues we seek to resolve, never on Oceana as an organization,” Heck explains. “Build your campaign around the real problem and the science behind it so that attacks against your organization don’t distract from what truly matters.”
“This is a difficult time to campaign, but also a crucial one,” says Olivares. “We are like sea creatures learning to adapt to the dark.”
