Pitcher has been a visiting professor at the University of Concepcion, Chile and a member of the Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Ploen..
[6][9] In October 2017 the NOAA Assistant Administrator for Fisheries wrote an open letter to the journal Marine Policy [10] about a published paper co-authored by Pitcher which suggested the U.S. exports to Japan a significant amount of seafood products from illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU).
[11] The NOAA letter said it "strongly objects to the authors’ claims regarding U.S. seafood exports to Japan and doubts the validity of the methodology used to make such estimates.
[15] Pitcher et al. countered by saying that instead of relying solely on public information supplied by the fishery, they had used "necessarily confidential sources (over 120 interviews) [which described] the procedures being used in laundering 27 IUU fish products".
[16] Pitcher has authored or co-authored 17 books or edited volumes, 250 peer-reviewed research papers and 251 other published contributions.