Four South American countries have vowed to join forces to fight illegal fishing off their coasts by China’s huge fleet of fishing boats.
Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru said in a statement Wednesday that they will take measures to “prevent, stop and jointly confront” illegal fishing near their exclusive economic zones in Pacific waters.
The joint statement did not directly mention China, but the environmental group Greenpeace and Oceana, a fishing-tracking organization, have repeatedly warned China of increasing illegal fishing in the region.
The four South American countries have said they will strengthen “cooperation and real-time information exchange” to stop illegal fishing off their coasts.
Ecuador expressed its displeasure with China in July when some 300 Chinese fishing vessels arrived near the Galapagos Islands to catch giant squid, nearly half of which were alleged to have turned off their positioning systems to conceal their whereabouts.
Beijing authorities in early August banned its vessels from fishing in the waters around the Galapagos in September and November of this year.
But the non-governmental organization Oceana says that Chinese ocean-going fleets have turned southward through international waters to fish near the exclusive economic zones of Peru and Chile.
In recent years, China’s distant-water fishing fleet has grown as offshore fisheries have been depleted. According to the Overseas Development Institute, China’s ocean-going fleet totals nearly 17,000 vessels, far more than any other country in the world, and it is nearly impossible to adequately monitor these vessels.
Experts say that the large number of Chinese pelagic fleets engage in “illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU)” fishing activities that not only threaten the sovereignty of coastal nations, but also endanger global food security and marine ecology.
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