China’s fleet is still plundering the oceans for fish
Even marine life in pristine waters around the Galápagos is being decimated by factory-style fishing
Factory-style fishing fleets are plundering the oceans under the orders of China’s President Xi Jinping. As fish stocks in Chinese waters dramatically declined in 2013, he urged the nation’s fishermen to “build bigger ships and venture even farther into oceans and catch bigger fish.”
A decade later, even marine life in pristine waters around the Galápagos Islands is being decimated, despite being protected under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.
“When they fish, they affect migratory species, which in many cases are part of the Galapagos marine ecosystem,” Ecuador Navy captain Guillermo Miranda confirmed.
“It’s a pretty serious problem, not just for Ecuador,” he said as reported by the Reuters news agency earlier this week.
Hooked:
- In 2021, China’s distant water fleet was implicated in illegal practices.
- It ranked worst of 152 coastal states on the global IUU Fishing Risk Index in 2023.
- Estimates of the total size of China’s fishing armada was at least “200,000” vessels in 2020, according to the Yale School of the Environment.
- Last year, data firm Statista calculated the figure at more than 496,000.
- That would amount to nearly half of the world’s fishing activity.
Chinese fleets [have] trespassed into waters and depleted fish stocks.
East Asia Forum
Delve deeper: “[China] says its distant-water fishing fleet numbers roughly 2,600,” Ian Urbina, an investigative reporter and member of the High Seas Initiative Leadership Council at The Aspen Institute, pointed out in a Yale School of the Environment report.
Between the lines: “But other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute, puts this number closer to 17,000,” he said in 2020.
Why this matters: In 2022, the East Asia Forum reported that “Chinese fishing fleets have trespassed into the waters of over 90 countries and depleted fish stocks.”
Big picture: Two years earlier, marine biologist Douglas McCauley at the University of California told Eco-Business, “China is the country that will shape what the future of ocean health becomes.”
China Factor comment: Very little has changed since then. Comrade Xi’s regime is still wiping out global fish stocks.