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How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans. Expect prices to Increase

shockshiok

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Loyal
World's largest fishing fleet taking all fish from ocean.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-chinas-expanding-fishing-fleet-is-depleting-worlds-oceans


How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

After exhausting areas close to home, China’s vast fishing fleet has moved into the waters of other nations, depleting fish stocks. More than seafood is at stake, as China looks to assert itself on the seas and further its geo-political ambitions, from East Asia to Latin America.

BY IAN URBINA • AUGUST 17, 2020
For years, no one knew why dozens of battered wooden “ghost boats” — often along with corpses of North Korean fishermen whose starved bodies were reduced to skeletons — were routinely washing ashore along the coast of Japan.
A recent investigation I did for NBC News, based on new satellite data, has revealed, however, what marine researchers now say is the most likely explanation: China is sending a previously invisible armada of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, forcing out smaller North Korean boats and leading to a decline in once-abundant squid stocks of more than 70 percent. The North Korean fishermen washing up in Japan apparently ventured too far from shore in a vain search for squid and perished.
The Chinese vessels — more than 700 of them last year — appear to be in violation of United Nations sanctions that prohibit foreign fishing in North Korean waters. The sanctions, imposed in 2017 in response to the country’s nuclear tests, were aimed at punishing North Korea by not allowing it to sell fishing rights in its waters in exchange for valuable foreign currency.
The new revelations cast new light on the dire lack of governance of the world’s oceans and raise thorny questions about the consequences of China’s ever-expanding role at sea and how it is connected to the nation’s geopolitical aspirations.
Most Chinese ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in a week as a local boat might catch in a year.
Estimates of the total size of China’s global fishing fleet vary widely. By some calculations, China has anywhere from 200,000 to 800,000 fishing boats, accounting for nearly half of the world’s fishing activity. The Chinese government says its distant-water fishing fleet, or those vessels that travel far from China’s coast, numbers roughly 2,600, but other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), puts this number closer to 17,000, with many of these ships being invisible like those that satellite data discovered in North Korean waters. By comparison, the United States’ distant water fishing fleet has fewer than 300 vessels.

China is not only the world’s biggest seafood exporter, the country’s population also accounts for more than a third of all fish consumption worldwide. Having depleted the seas close to home, the Chinese fishing fleet has been sailing farther afield in recent years to exploit the waters of other countries, including those in West Africa and Latin America, where enforcement tends to be weaker as local governments lack the resources or inclination to police their waters. Most Chinese distant-water ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as local boats from Senegal or Mexico might catch in a year.

Many of the Chinese ships combing Latin American waters target forage fish, which are ground into fishmeal, a protein-rich pelletized supplement fed to aquaculture fish. The Chinese fleet has also focused on shrimp and now endangered totoaba fish, which are much prized in Asia for the alleged medicinal properties of their bladders, which can sell for between $1,400 and $4,000 each.

A North Korean ghost boat washed ashore along the coast of Japan.
A North Korean ghost boat washed ashore along the coast of Japan. FÁBIO NASCIMENTO
Nowhere at sea is China more dominant than in squid fishing, as the country’s fleet accounts for 50 to 70 percent of the squid caught in international waters, effectively controlling the global supply of the popular seafood. At least half of the squid landed by Chinese fishermen pulled from the high seas is exported to Europe, north Asia and the United States.

To catch squid, the Chinese typically use trawling nets stretched between two vessels, a practice widely criticized by conservationists because it results in a lot of fish inadvertently and wastefully killed. Critics also accuse China of keeping high-quality squid for domestic consumption and exporting lower-quality products at higher prices. In addition, critics say, China overwhelms vessels from other countries in major squid breeding grounds and is in a position to influence international negotiations about conservation and distribution of global squid resources for its own interests.

China’s global fishing fleet did not grow into a modern behemoth on its own. The government has robustly subsidized the industry, spending billions of yuan annually. Chinese boats can travel so far partly because of a tenfold increase in diesel fuel subsidies between 2006 and 2011 (Beijing stopped releasing statistics after 2011, according to a Greenpeace study).

For over a decade, the Chinese government has helped pay to construct bigger, more advanced steel-hulled trawlers, even sending medical ships to fishing grounds to enable the fleet to stay at sea longer. The Chinese government supports the squid fleet in particular by providing it with an informational forecast of where to find the most lucrative squid stocks, using data gleaned from satellites and research vessels.
Our reporting team was forced to divert course to avoid a collision when a Chinese ship suddenly swerved toward our boat.
On its own, distant-water squid fishing is a money-losing business, according to research by Enric Sala, founder and leader of the National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas project. The sale price of squid typically does not come close to covering the cost of the fuel required to catch the fish, Sala found.
Still, China is hardly the worst offender when it comes to such subsidies, which conservationists say, along with over-capacity of fishing vessels and illegal fishing, is a major reason that the oceans are rapidly running out of fish.
FranceFisherman_Getty_web.jpg

ALSO ON YALE E360
A global ban on fishing on the high seas? The time is now. Read more.

More recently, the Chinese government has stopped calling for an expansion of its distant-water fishing fleet and released a five-year plan in 2017 that restricts the total number of offshore fishing vessels to under 3,000 by 2021. Daniel Pauly, a marine biologist and principal investigator for The Sea Around Us Project at The University of British Columbia, said he believes that the Chinese government is serious in wanting to restrict its distant-water fleet. “Whether they can enforce the planned restrictions onto their fleet is another question,” he added.
A Chinese squid vessel flying the South Korean flag while fishing at night.
A Chinese squid vessel flying the South Korean flag while fishing at night. SOUTH KOREAN FISHERIES AGENCY / ULLEUNG ISLAND
Other attempts to rein in China’s fishing fleet, however, have been slow. Imposing reforms and policing them is difficult partly because laws are lax, much of the workforce on vessels is illiterate, many ships are unlicensed or lack unique names or the identifying numbers needed for tracking, and the country’s fishery research institutions often refuse to standardize or share information domestically or abroad.
Still, more than seafood is at stake in the present size and ambition of China’s fishing fleet. Against the backdrop of China’s larger geo-political aspirations, the country’s commercial fishermen often serve as de-facto paramilitary personnel whose activities the Chinese government can frame as private actions. Under a civilian guise, this ostensibly private armada helps assert territorial domination, especially pushing back fishermen or governments that challenge China’s sovereignty claims that encompass nearly all of the South China Sea.
“What China is doing is putting both hands behind its back and using its big belly to push you out, to dare you to hit first,” said Huang Jing, former director of the Center on Asia and Globalization at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
Chinese fishing boats are notoriously aggressive and often shadowed, even on the high seas or in other countries’ national waters, by armed Chinese Coast Guard vessels. While reporting at sea, my photographer and I filmed 10 illegal Chinese squid ships crossing into North Korean waters. Our reporting team was forced to divert its course to avoid a dangerous collision after one of the Chinese fishing captains suddenly swerved toward the team’s boat, coming within 10 meters, likely intending to ward off the boat.
From the waters of North Korea to Mexico, incursions by Chinese fishing ships are becoming more frequent and aggressive.
China has sought to extend its maritime reach through more traditional means, too. The government has, for example, expanded its naval force faster than any other country, with at least three fleets of naval ships believed to be under construction, while also dispatching at least a dozen advanced research vessels that prospect for minerals, oil, and other natural resources.
But the more aggressive and ubiquitous blue-water presence globally is China’s fishing fleet. These vessels are routinely cast by Western military analysts as a vanguard “civilian militia” that functions as “a nonuniformed, unprofessional force without proper training and outside of the frameworks of international maritime law, the military rules of engagement, or the multilateral mechanisms set up to prevent unsafe incidents at sea,” as Greg Poling wrote recently in Foreign Policy.
Nowhere is China’s fishing fleet more omnipresent than in the South China Sea, which is among the most hotly contested regions in the world, with competing historical, territorial and even moral claims from China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and Indonesia. Aside from fishing rights, the interests in these waters stem from a tangled morass of national pride, lucrative subsea oil and gas deposits, and a political desire for control over a region through which a third of the world’s maritime trade flows.
In the South China Sea, the Spratly islands have attracted most attention as the Chinese government has built artificial islands on reefs and shoals in these waters, militarizing them with aircraft strips, harbors, and radar facilities. Chinese fishing boats bolster the effort by swarming the zone, crowding and intimidating potential competitors, as they did in 2018, suddenly dispatching more than 90 fishing ships to drop anchor within several miles of Philippines-held Thitu Island immediately after the Philippine government began modest upgrades on the island’s infrastructure.
South Korean squid fisherman, shown here in the East Sea of Japan, are being forced to fish farther off their own coast by the influx of Chinese vessels.
South Korean squid fisherman, shown here in the East Sea of Japan, are being forced to fish farther off their own coast by the influx of Chinese vessels. SOUTH KOREAN FISHERIES AGENCY / ULLEUNG ISLAND
In justifying its rights over the region, Beijing usually makes a so-called “nine-dash line” argument, which relies on maps of historic fishing grounds that feature a line made of nine dashes encompassing most of the South China Sea as belonging to China. Partly because China ignores most of the criticism, and partly because China is economically and otherwise dominant on the global stage, there is a tendency in Western media to lay blame on China for many of the same actions of which the U.S. and Europe have been guilty — in the past or presently. And while defining what is true or fair in the South China Sea may be no easier than it has proven to be in places like the Middle East, most legal scholars and historians say the nine-dash line argument has no basis under international law, and it was found to be invalid in a 2016 international court ruling.
Clashes over fishing grounds involving the Chinese are not limited to the South China Sea. Japan and China are at odds over the Senkaku Islands, known in Chinese as the Diaoyu or “fishing” islands. Elsewhere, an Argentine Coast Guard vessel fired a warning shot to halt a Chinese ship’s escape to international waters in March, 2016. When the Chinese ship, the Lu Yan Yuan Yu, responded by trying to ram the Argentine vessel, the Coast Guard ship capsized the fishing vessel. Some of the Chinese crew escaped by swimming out to other Chinese vessels, while others were rescued by the Coast Guard.
shutterstock_187015118_boat-ocean_web2.jpg

ALSO ON YALE E360
Lawless Ocean: The link between human rights abuses and overfishing. Read more.

From the waters of North Korea to Mexico to Indonesia, incursions by Chinese fishing ships are becoming more frequent, brazen and aggressive. It hardly takes a great feat of imagination to picture how a seemingly civilian clash could rapidly escalate into a bigger military conflict. Such confrontations also raise humanitarian concerns about fishermen becoming collateral damage, and environmental questions about the government policies accelerating ocean depletion. But above all, the reach and repercussions of China’s at-sea ambitions highlight anew that the real price of fish is rarely what appears on the menu.
This article was produced in collaboration between The Outlaw Ocean Project and Yale Environment 360.
 

nirvarq

Alfrescian (InfP)
Generous Asset
Chinks alone if left unchecked will deplete the seven seas.

The Humans race is still very primitive & uncouth both eastern & western cultures.

/pui ! Lol......
 
Last edited:

kiketerm

Alfrescian
Loyal
Disgusting, these people have emptied the South China Sea, now looking to go to S America with 17,000 fishing vessels to kill those stocks.

We wont be able to enjoy fish at this rate. they will all be gone
 

redbull313

Alfrescian
Loyal
vessels that fish illegally in other countries water should be missiled and sunk and no rescue for them
let the fishes eat their fucking remains
now every country will claim international waters as their own
wait and see what happens next.........there will be no more fishes in the sea, and when point finger it will be china is the culprit.
 

shockshiok

Alfrescian
Loyal
https://www.eurasiareview.com/20082020-chinese-boats-return-as-south-china-sea-fishing-ban-ends/


File photo of Chinese fishing fleet. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

File photo of Chinese fishing fleet. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency​

Chinese Boats Return As South China Sea Fishing Ban Ends
August 20, 2020 BenarNews 0 Comments
By BenarNews


By Drake Long
Chinese fishing vessels are pouring back into disputed waters, satellite images show, after China ended its annual summer fishing ban in the South China Sea and East China Sea, potentially heightening tension in the region as fleets compete for declining fish stocks.
This year’s ban started on May 1 and ended on Sunday, according to Chinese state media. Its imposition was opposed by neighboring countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, who reject China’s assertion of its jurisdiction over contested waters. But the 3½-month ban, which China says is aimed at environmental conservation, passed with relatively few recorded incidents involving non-Chinese boats and fishermen.
However, the end of the ban could usher in problems of its own. Vietnamese fishing associations and academics told BenarNews that the potential for conflict between fishermen from different countries will rise.
China is known for sending paramilitary ships and its coast guard to back its fishing fleets as they assert resource rights in disputed waters, or even within other countries’ exclusive economic zones.
Trang Pham, a lecturer of International Relations at Vietnam National University, says that without some agreement between China and Vietnam to share fishing rights in disputed waters, conflict is inevitable as ships jostle over prime catching spots.

“This puts Vietnamese fishermen in a difficult position as they need to [move their] equipment to protect themselves from the aggressive behavior of Chinese coast guards, which escort Chinese fishermen, and at the same time compete with a much larger number of Chinese fishermen in the area,” she said.
“Those fishermen are not rich, they just barely survive each day, so when they become desperate they may react awfully. That’s why the government needs to settle the dispute soon to, at the very least, guarantee the life of their own fishermen.”
China’s unilateral ban had encompassed an area north of the 12th parallel in the South China Sea, covering waters and islets that are disputed between China, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, raising suspicions that the ban was an attempt to assert Chinese jurisdiction over the area.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said the ban, which has been instituted annually since 1999, was the “toughest in history,” with thousands of patrols, seizing 1,691 illegal fishing boats and removing 630,000 square meters of illegal fishing nets. State-run TV showed scores of Chinese fishing boats leaving port for the South China Sea on Sunday.
Satellite images showed fishing boats on Sunday entering the Union Banks, an area of the Spratly island chain frequently visited by China’s fishing fleets and maritime militia as well as fishermen from neighboring countries.
Union Banks was notably not covered under the fishing ban, but other fishing boats, presumably Chinese, were farther north near Chinese-occupied features in the Paracels chain, such as Tree Island, Duncan Island, and Robert Island as of Monday and Tuesday. Some fishing boats were visible Tuesday in the harbor of Woody Island, China’s main base in the Paracels, a frequent stopping place for Chinese-operated ships moving through the South China Sea.
In the East China Sea, Japan already warned China not to let fishermen near the Senkaku Islands, a string of uninhabited islets that is administrated by Japan yet claimed by China. The Japanese government previously expressed alarm over the constant presence of Chinese government-affiliated ships within 24 nautical miles of the Senkakus.
“The repeated activities are extremely serious. Japan Coast Guard patrol ships have issued warnings, and we have protested to the Chinese side through diplomatic channels over and over again,” said Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga at a press conference in July.
The Chinese fishing ban coincided with a period of heightened tension in the South China Sea, as Beijing presses its sweeping claims to virtually the entire strategic waterway, and the United States pushes back with its own displays of military might in the region.
While the ban passed off with relatively few incidents between Chinese authorities and fishermen from other countries, there were some confrontations.
A Chinese ship was accused of ramming and sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat in early June around the Paracel Islands, in the north of the South China Sea, while video emerged of a China Coast Guard ship spraying another Vietnamese fisherman with a water cannon in July.
Tran Van Linh, chairman of a fishery association based in the central Vietnamese coastal city of Danang, contended that China’s ambitions go beyond securing fish stocks.
“They want to show their power in the South China Sea for the purpose of hegemony,” Linh told RFA’s Vietnamese-language service, a sister entity of BenarNews, adding that about 17,000 fishing boats with special nets and lights had been sent to fishing grounds in the South China Sea.
Illegal fishing is rife in the South China Sea, and disputes over fishing grounds are not limited to just China.
Members of the Malaysian coast guard on Sunday shot dead a Vietnamese sailor during a violent confrontation with Vietnamese-flagged fishing boats suspected of encroaching in Malaysian waters of the South China Sea, authorities said. And Thailand said it arrested 36 Vietnamese fishermen and confiscated four boats on Tuesday, suspecting the fishermen of poaching in Thai waters.
But China operates the largest fleet of commercial fishing vessels in the world, and is also the number one source of illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing in Asia, according to the IUU Fishing Index put out by the Geneva-based Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
Even during the period of the ban, the moratorium seemed only to push Chinese fishermen further out rather than reel them in.
Two trawlers were caught illegally fishing a protected species in Gabonese waters on Aug. 8, according to Sea Shepherd. Both trawlers are flagged by China and operated by Dalian International Fisheries, according to the International Maritime Organization database.
Also, a fleet of hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels have been operating near Ecuador’s Galapagos marine reserve since late July, prompting the U.S. State Department to issue a statement in support of Ecuador’s maritime law enforcement agencies and condemned China’s fishing activity in the area, which threatens endangered species of shark. Ecuador reportedly reached an agreement with China for the flotilla to leave, but ship-tracking data shows the ships are still there.
Satellite imagery and ship-tracking data also showed that during the ban, Chinese fishermen and maritime militia were also active in areas of the Spratlys not covered by the moratorium, but plagued by over-fishing. Chinese maritime militia were spotted in Subi Reef, near the Philippine-occupied Thitu Island, just last week.
Home » Chinese Boats Return As South China Sea Fishing Ban Ends
 

Hypocrite-The

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Author Richard Flanagan unleashes tirade against salmon farming industry
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By Adam Langenberg
Posted 10hhours ago, updated 6hhours ago
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Duration: 2 minutes 20 seconds2m 20s

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Richard Flanagan describes Tasmania's salmon industry as 'one big lie'
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Booker prize-winning author Richard Flanagan has taken a swipe at Tasmania's salmon industry, describing it as "one big lie".
Key points:
  • Richard Flanagan said he was compelled to write after witnessing the degradation of his local environment
  • He alleges up to "a third of salmon" is "processed industrial chicken … feathers, fat and the macerated beaks, claws, guts"
  • He said the "industry" is "very good at silencing its critics"
Flanagan took aim at what he described the industry's "harsh" animal management practices and the government regulation — claiming the product being sold is not as healthy as advertised and warned of what a mass expansion of the industry would bring.
Speaking on the ABC's AM program, Flanagan said he'd been motivated to write his new book, Toxic: The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmanian Salmon Industry, because of the "slow destruction" of the environment near his Bruny Island shack from where he had written all of his previous books.
"The spur was that the water started dying, the fish started vanishing, slime and algae started appearing," Flanagan said.
"I thought I would write something about this, just a short article, and then I started talking to scientists, to people in other communities and I discovered one story of horror after another, after another," he said.
Richard Flanagan looks at the camera.

Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan.(
ABC News: James Dunlevie
)
"I realised that Tasmanian Atlantic salmon is just one big lie. It's not clean, it's not green and it's not even healthy."
Mr Flanagan, who stated that there was "another massive sea grab coming that the state government is keeping quiet" said his book was not timed to coincide with the state election campaign, which is occurring a year earlier than scheduled.
"It's got nothing to do with the Tasmanian election, but it does raise very serious issues.
"What's going on in Tasmania is that these beloved coastal waterways that are so important to everyday Tasmanians are being stolen from them and locked up to benefit a handful of very rich corporations," he said.
Farmed salmon in an aquaculture project off Tasmania

Opponents to farmed salmon point to environmental issues.
Flanagan said the planned expansion of the industry included areas like Boat Harbour and Stanley on the north west coast, Port Arthur in the south.
He dismissed the industry's claim of sustainable farming practices and said when consumers eat salmon they were also eating chicken "feathers, fat and the macerated beaks, claws [and] guts".
Flanagan said a salmon processor he had spoken to had stressed that the levels of ethoxyquin — a stabiliser used in salmon feed — in Tasmanian salmon were well within the European limits of 150 milligrams per kilogram of feed.
"But what if there are no safe levels and why is this being kept so secret?" he said.
Flanagan also said fish meal was being used less by the industry, and replaced by plant-based and animal product: "Processed industrial chicken."
Flanagan said he wanted to "see this industry survive" but added he believed it to be a "very small employer in Tasmania" with around "1,500 jobs".
"They [producers] should be going to land-based, that's what's happening around the world.
"The industry is very good at silencing its critics and the book details a long history of threats, intimidation and the use of legal ploys such as non-disclosure agreements to silence any criticism escaping," he said.
"But come down here and talk to the commercial fisherman, the recreational fisherman, to the shack owner, to the kayaker, to the surfer and ask them what's going on."
A fish pen

A salmon farming enclosure in the open water off the Tasmanian coast.(
Supplied: Huon Aquaculture
)
Flanagan claims there will be a massive expansion of salmon pens in the state that Tasmanian government had not told voters about.
"I know from sources within government that what's being proposed are beloved areas of the north west coast … from Burnie through to west of Wynyard. These are beautiful places like Boat Harbour, possibly Rocky Cape, possibly Table Cape."
"You'll hear all this nonsense about world's best practice … about how we live within regulations, there are a lot of regulations, none of which are enforced," he said.
Salmon farming

There are three major producers of farmed salmon in Tasmania.(
ABC News: Sophie Zoellner
)
Deputy Liberal Jeremy Rockliff leader did not rule out a wide expansion of fish farms in the state but said the community would be consulted before any plans progressed.
"There'll be no expansion of any salmon industry across Tasmanian waters without thorough analysis, thorough consultation," he said.
"If there are expansion opportunities into the future and it does employ many Tasmanians and it's done on a very sustainable basis that would be welcome, but that is a long way away.
"There is a lot of work to do when it comes to establishing opportunities for aquaculture, ensuring the sustainability of aquaculture."
Mr Rockliff said there had been "huge gains" in the transparency, sustainability and regulation of the salmon industry since the Liberals came to power in 2014.
Local industry a 'global leader', spokesperson says
A Tasmanian Salmonid Growers Association (TSGA) spokesperson said the organisation was "still reading the book with a science-based lens".
"Richard Flanagan is primarily celebrated for his works of fiction. The TSGA urges people to be informed by facts, widely available from governments and leading researchers, and from the reporting of the companies," the spokesperson said.
"Factual information about our industry is available from science-based organisations like CSIRO and Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and other universities around the world."
"Tasmanian salmon is a global leader, independently accredited by organisations like the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Best Aquaculture Practices and the RSPCA."
"The TSGA welcomes robust discussion — our industry is always striving to do better for the environment and our communities, and feedback is an important part of that — but debate must take in all sides and consider science-based evidence."
Posted 10hhours ago, updated 6hhours ago
 
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