Between 13 July and 13 August, 340 Chinese vessels comprised of fuel providers, fishing boats, tender boats, reefers and unregistered boats were discovered by the Ecuadorean navy just on the outside edge of their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) near the bio-diverse Galapagos Island. This stirred outrage in Ecuador, which has a “Zero-tolerance” policy toward illegal fishing. 

Galapagos Island is a famous marine reserve for tortoise and iguanas. It became famous through the contributions of Charles Darwin’s theories presented in his famous work “On the Origin of Species.”

Nearly 20% of marine life in the Galapagos are unique to the region of the Galapagos Islands; they cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. Thus, it is protected within the EEZ and identified as a reserve. 

After Ecuador’s protest against illegal fishing, China has begun to rein in its vast international fishing fleet. However, local navy commander Darwin Jarrin says nearly half of those vessels had intermittently switched off their satellite communication, breaching the rules of the regional fisheries management organization in the Galapagos and showing malicious intent to continue the illegal fishing despite warnings. 15 continued to remain around Galapagos Island despite Ecuador’s harsh discontent. 

In 2017, China announced plans to limit the size of the fleet to 3000 vessels by 2021 as part of its 13th fisheries five-year plan. However, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) discovered that the fleet currently has 16,966 vessels.

This is not the only case where Chinese fishing fleets have posed a problem in international waters. Illegal fishing has continuously re-occurred throughout recent years with China’s fishing fleet violating laws in international waters from West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea to the Korean peninsula. They serve as an aggressive geopolitical strategy to keep other countries in check by dominating the water in East Asia. No countries have the power to go against China without suffering economic backlash. Hence, many countries can only voice their dissents when China’s fishing fleet violates international law. 

However, illegal fishing has multiple serious implications for the environment, food security, and crimes against humanity. 

Illegal fishing often uses a tactic of scrapping the bottom of the seafloor with their net that’s known as “bottom trawling.” The fishing net that drags the ocean floor destroys the habitats and shelters of fragile corals and sponge ecosystems that are necessary for marine life to survive and thrive. Furthermore, it stirs the sentiments lying on the seabed, mixing pollutants in the water and harming marine life. This disruption in the ecosystem results in toxic algae blooms and oxygen-deficient zones. 

In July 2020, The famous “Ghost Boats” incident found on the coast of Japan with corpses of North Korean fishermen were shown to be a result of being forced out by Chinese industrial boats illegally fishing. NBC News discovered that North Korean fishermen died from venturing further out into the sea to search for squid. This is one example where food security in coastal communities and economic security in local fisheries suffers, resulting in death.  

Crimes against humanity incidents toward an Indonesian crew in May 2020 was made viral through a video of the crew pleading to the public of the inhumane treatment they received during work exploitation on the Chinese fishing vessel. The video showed the Chinese crew dumping the deceased body into the water.  A crew  of 24 Indonesians set off on the Long Xing 629, owned by Dalian Ocean Fishing Company, which was reported to be engaged in illegal fishing. Only 20 survived.

The ones who made it said they were “treated like animals,” and lawyers for the crew described it as a “textbook example of forced labour and human trafficking at sea.”

According to a Greenpeace study, China’s global fishing fleet did not grow into a modern behemoth on its own. The government has subsidized and supported the industry, spending billions of Yuan annually. Chinese boats can travel so far in part because of increases in diesel fuel subsidies from 2006 to 2011 after which Beijing stopped releasing statistics. 

China’s new regulations after the incident include harsher penalties for companies and captains involved in IUU (illegal, unreported, unregulated) fishing. However, conservationists monitoring the Galápagos episode believe it doesn’t resolve the problem. Pablo Guerrero, marine conservation director for WWF Ecuador stated the obvious:

“These boats operate without observers on board, they do not return to port, they transship their catch to mother vessels, which land the catch at ports. So, in a nutshell, they are fishing all the time, the fishing operation doesn’t stop.”

It’s true that China is not the only culprit in providing financial support for expanding the high sea fishing fleet in the lucrative yet illegal fishing industry (Japan and Spain provide the biggest subsidies for fishing fleets). However, it is the world’s biggest seafood exporter and the country’s population consumes a third of seafood worldwide. Thus, their message is loud and clear: as long as they continue to make money, they do not care what happens to the environment, the people and the impact it has in other local communities. With no treaty of an international agreement on illegal fishing from China, history will continue to repeat itself if we do nothing to stop it.