Having overfished its own coastal waters, China is aggressively deploying a global fishing fleet to exploit fishing grounds thousands of miles from its shores. The New York Times reports that over the last two decades, China has built the world’s largest deep-water fishing fleet, by far, with nearly 3,000 ships. The impact is increasingly being felt from the Indian Ocean to the South Pacific, from the coasts of Africa to those off South America — a manifestation on the high seas of China’s global economic might.

In July 2020, we posted that Ecuador raised an alarm after a naval patrol sighted a fleet of around 260 Chinese fishing vessels just outside the Galápagos protection zone. Naval patrols have been stepped up to monitor the Chinese ships. Chinese fishing vessels come regularly to the Pacific around the Galápagos, but in recent years fleets have been the largest on record.

The United States Coast Guard has supported naval patrols in the region as part of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO), the treaty organization monitoring high-seas fishing from Chile to Australia.

In August, the Coast Guard cutter USCGC James carried out a long-distance patrol to help Ecuador police Chinese squid-jigging operators off the Galapagos Islands. The waters off the Galapagos are one of several seasonal destinations for China’s distant-water squid fishing fleet, which operates in flotillas of hundreds of vessels each, aided by reefer ships for provisioning and offtake. James‘ mission was to establish a presence in the area and look for signs of illegal fishing, an all-too-common feature of China’s distant-water fishing industry.

Maritime Executive reports that on August 3-4, the crew of the James conducted inspections of Chinese squid jiggers and reefer ships in the area.  Some vessels allowed boarding teams aboard, but one group of four ships made an escape attempt. Three – including a Panamanian-flagged reefer – departed the scene. Meanwhile, the fourth ship turned on a course to ram the James, forcing the cutter to maneuver to avoid a collision. The incident is reportedly under review in a multilateral proceeding.

Reports of illegal conduct involving Chinese distant-water fishing vessels can be found in Indonesia, the Philippines, Ecuador, Argentina, Somalia and many states along the coast of West Africa. Though shark finning and poaching inside other nations’ EEZs are common, the illegality does not appear to be limited to the catch. According to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a majority of Chinese distant-water fishing crewmembers report physical abuse, debt bondage, excessive overtime, and poor living conditions.

Thanks to Dexter Donham for contributing to this post.