The Chinese fishing fleet that preceded the seas has returned to settle off the Galapagos Islands

A huge fleet of Chinese fishing boats once again plies the Galapagos Islands. The More Galapagos initiative, dedicated to the protection and conservation of the archipelago’s marine reserve, denounced on Tuesday that the first Chinese industrial fishing vessel named Shun Xing 18 settled in the south of the islands.

“We are asking for concrete actions to ensure that they do not enter the island’s exclusive economic zone”, requested the reunification in their social networks, in which they also mentioned the President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso.

Eliecer cruz, spokesperson for Más Galapagos, indicated that Global Fish Watch is monitoring the path of Chinese ships, that are currently in international waters.

“The main body of the fleet is about 400 kilometers west of the archipelago, it’s still quite a distance, but since this fleet is functioning, it is that they send one or two ships forward and once they are ‘they find the squid schools they call the others and all come the fleet “, underlined Cruz, as reported by the Ecuadorian newspaper Trade.

“The authorities have a hard job, we will continue to monitor the route of these ships, ”he added.

Gustavo Manrique, Minister of the Environment, told the media that the fleet is outside 200 miles of Ecuadorian waters. He also warned that in the event of transgression in the economic zone of the country, there will be sanctions.

“We have the protocols, the fast boats, we have an agreement with the Government of Canada, which is to find when they want to turn off the navigation equipment so that it is not checked, this has been achieved for a month, everything is under control so that these boats do not enter ”, declared the Ecuadorian official.

He also stressed that the government is monitoring the situation in the country’s waters from day one: “We have been working from day one with the Ministry of Defense, with the Ministry of Communication, Chancellery, the Ministry of with satellite broadcasts, including aerial ones, which guarantee that these ships will not enter Ecuadorian territory ”.

Cruz recalled that last year the presence of a Chinese fleet of up to 300 ships had been reported. In this sense, he asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Navy to redouble their efforts to prevent Chinese fishing vessels from entering the country’s economic zone.

In August 2020, the Ecuadorian Navy reported that 149 of some 325 ships, most of them flying the Chinese flag, they had turned off their satellite positioning and communication system to avoid monitoring their fishing activities around the archipelago, thus violating the World Fisheries Agreements (RFMOs).

The former Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luis Gallegos, reported that the foreign fishing fleet, mainly of Chinese origin, had left the Exclusive economic zone which surrounds the Galapagos Islands towards the north of Peru.

After the accusations, the Chinese Embassy in Ecuador assured that its ships respect “strictly“Conservation measures and He denied that there were any Chinese vessels engaged in illegal fishing.

However, the constant maneuvers of the Chinese fleets have placed the Xi Jinping regime at the center of the controversy.

“The size and aggressiveness of this fleet against marine species is a great threat to the balance of species in the Galapagos”The former environment minister said at the time, Yolanda Kakabadsé, in an interview with The Guardian.

Galapagos –World Heritage Site, according to the United Nations-, which has one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, is in danger. “While we were going on the cruise ships, we saw that on the beaches in remote places, there are cute chinese bottles», He noticed Natali Constant, a guide to the island. He also told local media that even sharks – many of which are monitored by GPS – “They are going further and further.

“Having depleted fish stocks in national waters and encouraged by subsidies, China’s deep-sea fishing fleets have traveled further and further, and their companies have built more and more vessels to meet growing demand. of seafood. ‘explained to Voice of America Miren Gutiérrez, Associate Researcher at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) based in London. This institute had about 17,000 Chinese vessels fishing in the world.

Towards the end of April of last year, The Argentinian prefecture also had to act before the mobilization of Chinese ships that were depriving the Argentinian seabed.

The Chinese regime has announced in recent hours that it will temporarily ban its fishing fleet, the world’s largest, from catching squid in parts of the Pacific and Atlantic. where overfishing has brought these populations to the brink of collapse.

China captures up to 70% of the world’s squid and its ships reach West Africa and Latin America to satisfy the country’s appetite for seafood.

But Chinese ships will suspend operations in the main squid spawning grounds in the southwest Atlantic, near Argentina from Thursday to September 30, and parts of the Pacific from September to November, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. The ban is the result of international backlash against China’s huge overseas fleet, accused of overexploiting and damaging fragile marine ecosystems.

The areas covered by the moratorium are breeding grounds for two of the most popular varieties of squid: Argentine shortfin squid and Humboldt squid.

Populations of Argentine shortfin squid have been low in recent years. The average catch of Chinese vessels in the southwest Atlantic was only 50 tonnes in 2019, up from 2,000 tonnes previously, according to the Squid Fisheries Association of China.

“China is the biggest consumer of squid in the world and the catches running out worry officials”, manifested Zhou Wei, a marine ecosystem ecologist at Greenpeace China. And I add: “Ensuring a stable supply of shellfish is important for ensuring food security.”

China’s deep-sea fishing fleet numbers more than 2,600 ships, more than ten times that of the United States. Almost a third is dedicated to squid fishing.

“A ban on squid fishing – even temporarily – by China is essential for the health of the ocean, given the importance of the catches ”, he declared Zhang Jihong, marine biologist at the China Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute.

China’s fishing industry employs more than 14 million people and another 30 million depend on fish for their livelihoods. But as their country’s stocks run out, Chinese fishermen are sailing further afield and have found themselves embroiled in maritime disputes.

Illegal fishing is the 6th most lucrative criminal economy in the world, with estimated revenues between $ 15 billion and $ 36 billion, according to a 2017 report from Global Financial Integrity. The Chinese fishing fleet, with around 17,000 boats, by far the largest in the world, is the protagonist of this problem, and China appears as the country with the worst score for illegal fishing in a report by the Global Initiative 2019.

Although this was a long-standing problem, itThe Chinese fishing fleet became of particular concern after 2016. Since then it has sparked serious annual alerts in Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina. Only in Chile, illegal fishing represents an estimated annual cost of $ 300 million for the country, according to the 2020 AthenaLab report. Ecuador, environmental concerns became imminent after 2017, following the case of the Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999, a vessel intercepted in the Galapagos Marine Reserve, protected by UNESCO, with over 300 tonnes of sharks on board, including endangered hammerhead sharks.

Last year, faced with increasing maneuvers by Chinese fleets, the US coast guard mobilized the ship USCGC Bertholf to support Ecuadorian navy patrols around the EEZ. At the time, Admiral Karl Schultz, commander of the Coast Guard, argued that Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing has become the top priority for maritime safety, above the fight against drugs and piracy.

(With information from El Comercio, AFP and EFE)

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