Chinese illegal fishing vessel. (Photo: Daniel Antunez)

China develops illegal fishing, accuses Sea Around Us

WORLDWIDE
Friday, April 22, 2016, 23:40 (GMT + 9)

Non-government organisation Sea Around Us Project accuses Chinese fishers of following a growing pattern of illegal fishing infractions all around the world and analyses the reasons behind the illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practice.

The environmentalist organization highlights that according to FAO's statistics, IUU fishing accounts for 15 per cent of annual global catch, which means at least 26 million tonnes lost and an estimated USD 10 – USD 20 billion lost annually from the global economy.

The NGO supports its analysis with examples of the cases in which Chinese vessels were caught poaching, mentioned by the newspaper The Economist in an articles entitled Trawling for Trouble.

In the first place, it includes the incidents that took place in Indonesia, whose authorities are awaiting a Supreme Court decision that would allow them to destroy ten Chinese vessels caught illegally fishing in Indonesian waters in 2014.

In this regard, it stresses that while it is accepted by many observers that the vessels were inside Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the Chinese government maintains the fishers were, instead, inside “traditional Chinese fishing grounds.”

Other examples make reference to the governments of Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, who have all detained Chinese fishers in their waters as well as in Russia, North and South Korea and Sri Lanka.

To Sea Around Us, part of the problem is consumption and it supports this view by mentioning that The Economist considers that “Chinese fish-consumption per person is twice the global average” and that to sustain this massive demand, China’s wild catch is equally as large, at around 14 million tonnes, compared to the US’s 7 million tonnes.

As the fish in China’s coastal waters are already greatly overfished, and continue to be depleted (inshore fisheries have 5-30 per cent of the amount of fish they had in the 1950’s), their fleets are actively encouraged to venture further out into the ocean in search of larger catches.

The NGO considers that foreign policy is another reason for China’s aggressive fishing practices and offers as an example what the article in The Economist states: “fish can have strategic uses.”

The organisation points out that not only does China have the world’s largest distant water fleet, fishing in nearly every country in the world (Pauly et al. 2014), but China also claims sovereignty over much of the South China Sea, and when a vast fleet of boats extensively operates in these waters, each boat seems to create a physical fact for China’s claims.

To the NGO, it seems international rules and norms are being manipulated when one country’s EEZ is described by another country as their own “traditional waters” and thus, China is one of the few state actors that does not seem to be willing to recognise the globally negotiated UNCLOS provisions for defining and addressing EEZ and territorial water claims.

“And this is a fact that is hard to ignore. Yet there are many strategies that can help reduce this practice, as long as flag and host countries are willing to accept and operate within international norms and rules agreed to by the global community. From satellite monitoring, to increased vessel identification, to better enforcement, IUU fishing can be faced head-on,” Sea Around Us Project concludes.

Related articles:

- Govt destroys over 20 foreign vessels due to illegal fishing
- China's economic growth boosts its illegal fishing in Latin America
- Prefecture sinks a Chinese jigger fishing illegally

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