Recently, after a cross-continent inquiry through the Environmental Justice Foundation, a British non-governmental organization, China's distant-water fishing fleet confronts new claims of voracious unlawful overfishing, the decimation of protected species, and maltreatment of southeast Asian fishing crews.
The EJF research, which includes violent video evidence obtained by Indonesian fishermen, highlights supervision failures even by the Chinese government, the inadequacies of other nations' fisheries authorities, and global consumer ignorance or apathy, following an early report from the Financial Times.
The fully armed US, notwithstanding being overpowered, the Coast Guard cutter zipped through to the dark blue seas, intimidating in size, against the squadron of a few hundred Chinese squid-fishing vessels. It was the Coast Guard's first expedition to combat illicit fishery in the eastern Pacific, and personnel onboard were given strong orders to maintain an eye out for any evidence of illegal, undocumented, or unregulated fishing.
Chinese Presence Within International Waters
The boat had arrived to assist due to rising concern from activists as well as governments in Latin America over the actions of the world's largest fishing fleet. During 2009, the number of Chinese-operated vessels detected trawling in the South Pacific increased eightfold, reaching 476 last year. Several of these fishing outings are brief, while the others last for months.
The United States, as per Coast Guard Lt. Hunter Stowes, the US alerted fisheries authorities more than one year ago that it planned to perform these boardings in the region. The documentation had already been completed, and a glance reveals that they had also included the flag that the ship would fly and the badges that the crew would wear. Stowes explained that just being in the water and performing the boardings makes a statement.
The vast seas are not devoid of law. While it may appear unusual or unlawful, storming ships on international waters is entirely legal. Ship boarding is a common practice in the collaborative effort to safeguard oceanic fish populations by ensuring that fishing vessels obey guidelines, such as avoiding targeting vulnerable species (such as sharks).
China’s largest fishing vessel is one of the worst shark finning vessels in the Pacific.
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Vast Water Encounters
Five other nations, particularly Chile as well as New Zealand, filed identical documentation under regulations that allow partners of the South Pacific fishing fleet to check one another's boats. The Coast Guard vessel James was smashed against every close.
Another vessel had made an aggressive 90-degree turn at their craft, prompting the Americans to take defensive action to prevent being rammed. Several Chinese fishing boat commanders took full advantage of the situation to rush away.
The boats in the flotilla were eventually determined to be among the fish industry's worst offenders, according to an AP-Univision investigation. Boats have a long history of worker exploitation, illicit fishing, and a variety of other maritime law infractions.
Though they were unable to catch up with the boats that had departed, authorities on the James were capable of boarding several of the flotillas. The chilly freezers were packed with dangerous and endangered fish and fins. Many nations throughout the world have laws against shark finning, which is the practice of removing a shark's fins and then putting the creature back into the water.
Sharks Fin Gourmet in Asia
Shark fins are the main component of shark fin soup, a gourmet dish throughout much of Asia (particularly China), where the dish was viewed as a status symbol. While demand for the dish has lately declined due to limitations on serving it at official gatherings and increased public conservation awareness as a result of celebrities' efforts, it is still a massive market; and the majority of it is fulfilled by black market manufacturers.
Despite China's foreign ministry informing the Associated Press that it has "zero tolerance" for illicit fishing, the government has frequently obstructed efforts to improve inspection processes in the Southern Ocean. And now, according to Mongabay, Chinese boats surreptitiously netted more sharks than China's official total for the country's whole longline fleet there. Mongabay investigated vessels operated by Dalian Ocean Fishing (DOF), a large state-owned corporation that has long purported to be China's major provider of sashimi-grade tuna for Japan.
As per the interviews with large numbers of men who worked as crew members on the company's 35 longline vessels, the vessels not only used forbidden gear to "deliberately catch tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of shark species every year, which include threatened species like the threatened species ocean waters whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus)," but they also fished them. On environmental and animal welfare grounds, the technique is prohibited in all elevated fisheries sectors and by China itself.
Overfishing has reduced the global number of marine sharks and rays by over three-quarters (71%) over the last 50 years, based on recent research, from the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.
In 2019, China stated that its whole longline fishery in the pacific captured 735 metric tons of fresh shark. However, the interviews demonstrate that five of such DOF boats caught almost 5.1 metric tons of drying shark fin during the same year, demonstrating that a small proportion of China's fleet captured more sharks than China declared for its whole longline fleet.
The figures do not add up, and it seems doubtful that China's communist leadership will penalize its fleet - and with this new study, it will be fascinating to see how nations respond and if any will challenge China inside the political sphere.
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