Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s criticism of China’s overfishing in other countries’ waters at the United Nations General Assembly this week, Ecuadorian officials have confirmed that a large number of Chinese fishing boats left the country’s nearby waters this week to work in waters off Peru. This follows months of Chinese fishing activities that have raised tensions along the Pacific coast of South America.
In June, some 300 Chinese fishing vessels arrived near the Galapagos Islands to catch giant squid in international waters. The Galapagos Islands are one of the most biodiverse regions in the world.
Daniel Ginez, the Ecuadorian naval operations commander, said this week that the Chinese fleet is larger this year than in previous years. He said the vessels could be classified as plunderers of fishing resources.
Ginez said, “Because there are so many fishing vessels, we are at risk of extinction of certain species.”
The Chinese fishing fleet has now moved south from the Galapagos Islands to operate in the waters off Peru.
Both Peru and Ecuador have large fishing fleets and are highly dependent on seafood for subsistence and foreign exchange. According to the World Bank, the two countries together caught 4.5 million tons of fish in 2018, but accounted for only 25% of China’s marine catch.
According to Oceana, an organization that tracks fishing activities, all Chinese fishing vessels spent a combined total of more than 73,000 hours fishing between July 13 and August 13, accounting for 99 percent of the fishing activities around the protected area.
Experts point out that a large number of Chinese distant-water fleets engage in “illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU)” fishing activities, which not only threaten the sovereignty of coastal countries, but also endanger global food security and marine ecology.
The overfishing of Chinese ocean-going vessels in international waters has sparked accusations from coastal countries and opposition from the international community.
In a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump specifically mentioned China’s fishing practices, saying that China “invites millions of tons of plastic and garbage into the ocean to overfishing in the waters of other countries.
A short time later, the U.S. Embassy in Peru posted a tweet accusing the Chinese fleet of changing the names of their vessels and turning off GPS tracking to limit surveillance of their activities.
The tweet said, “Overfishing can cause huge ecological and economic losses. Peru cannot afford such losses.”
The Chinese Embassy in Peru quickly responded, implying that the United States was lying about China’s ocean-going fishing.
The statement, written in Spanish, read: “We hope that the Peruvian public will not be deceived by false information.”
Last month, the U.S. Coast Guard, in coordination with the Ecuadorian Navy, sent vessels to the region to patrol more than 3,000 miles of international and Ecuadorian waters to monitor the large Chinese fishing fleet.
Ecuador is also reportedly working with its neighbors, including Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia, to establish a corridor of marine protected areas to limit commercial fishing in the region.
China’s global fishing fleet is massive. According to research by the Overseas Development Institute, China’s ocean-going fleet totals nearly 17,000 vessels, far larger than any other country in the world, making it nearly impossible to adequately monitor these vessels.
As China’s offshore fishing resources are depleted, the Chinese ocean-going fleet has been sailing further and further out to sea, while many of the world’s less developed countries that depend on fisheries resources lack the capacity to protect their maritime sovereignty.
“China’s high demand for fish makes it economically worthwhile to engage in IUU fishing,” Rashid Sumaila, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Marine and Fisheries Research, told VOA. “China lacks a strong, effective anti-IUU fishing policy and provides substantial and harmful subsidies, such as fuel subsidies.”
At a hearing last week, Idaho Republican Senator Jim Risch, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised President Trump for working with allies to counter China’s aggressive moves on multiple fronts.
He said, “China’s aggressive and illegal fishing practices violate the territorial integrity of coastal Latin American countries and raise significant long-term security concerns.”
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