Chinese boats spotted illegally hauling tuna in Indian Ocean
Radio Free Asia
Chinese squid vessels were documented using wide nets to illegally catch already overfished tuna as part of a surge in unregulated activity in the Indian Ocean, according to a new report by a Norway-based watchdog group that highlights growing concerns about the lack of international cooperation to protect marine species on the high seas.
The report, published in early December 2021 by Trygg Mat Tracking (TMT), found that the number of squid vessels in the high seas of the Indian Ocean — where fishing of the species is unregulated — has exploded sixfold since 2016.
The majority of the vessels sailing in the high seas off the coast of Oman and Yemen were flagged to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), whose overseas fleet is the world’s largest and has been dogged by accusations of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing around the world.
Behind the surge is a lack of oversight and decades of overfishing that has pushed the PRC’s overseas fleet — officially capped at 3,000 vessels but possibly consisting of thousands more — ever farther from home.
Unlike in other parts of the high seas, where countries jointly manage fishing grounds beyond any nation’s territorial waters, there’s no such organization regulating the squid caught in the Indian Ocean.
Using ship tracking data and an at-sea survey by Greenpeace International, TMT found that all the squid vessels were fishing with large nets — a practice considered far more harmful than using lures known as jigs because it generates bycatch of nontargeted species.
Among the other fish tangled in the vessels’ nets and spotted on board by drones were large species of tuna, a slow-maturing, top predator whose disappearance can indicate a dying ocean. None of the 341 vessels detected operating in the area in 2021 was authorized to fish for tuna by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), which regulates the catch in international waters.
Adding to the concerns, TMT said five vessels active in the area later docked at a port in Pakistan with 30 metric tons of skipjack and yellowfin tuna, whose population the IOTC is trying to rebuild after years of overfishing.
Another indication of illegal fishing: A significant number of vessels were sailing “dark,” meaning the device required to track a ship’s position was either switched off, transmitting intermittently or providing false identifiers.
Some of the Chinese vessels highlighted by TMT have a history of illegal activity in other parts of the world and were spotted on satellite drifting near the boundaries of Oman and Yemen, where they did not have permission to fish.
The vessels are also known to fish for squid in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South America, where similar tracking-device discrepancies have been observed. (Pictured: The Chinese-flagged Lu Rong Yuan Yu 609 prepares to fish for squid in the Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos Islands in July 2021.)
IMAGE CREDIT: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
