China ratifies ban on illegal fishing

Industry news? Not when you consider that the global ecosystem depends almost entirely on ocean biodiversity. That the world’s largest fishing fleet is now being curbed is news to every sailor.

China has the world’s largest illegal fishing fleet. That may come to an end now that the country has signed up to a United Nations international treaty against illegal fishing. A total of 82 countries have now signed the treaty.
The Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) requires fishing vessels to seek permission to call at a port and also inform the port in detail about their fishing activities. Permission to moor can be refused if unregulated fishing has taken place. The measure aims to prevent illegally caught fish from entering the market.
China’s illegal fishing fleet comprises nearly 17,000 vessels, according to the London-based think tank Overseas Development Institute (ODI). They operate mainly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. ‘They are depleting fish stocks and destroying ecosystems through their illegal fishing practices,’ the think tank said.

Sharks

In Argentina, the navy is regularly deployed against illegal Chinese fishermen. The Chinese fish off Peru and Ecuador mainly for giant squid, but protected sharks are also caught illegally.
Off the coast of Africa, illegal Chinese fishermen are also blamed for local fishermen catching less and less. Here, too, the Chinese illegally fish for shark. Several environmental organisations have been campaigning against illegal fishing for years, including the Environmental Justice Foundation. In a new report, they point out that if the seas are emptied off the coast of Senegal, this will cause additional population migration.

Convention

The convention was first signed by 23 states in 2009. All European countries are signatories. Russia and Libya have also recently signed the PSMA treaty. In a video, China pledges to abide by the treaty and crack down on illegal fishing.

Source: Tessa Heerschop in the Schuttevaer.
Image: Harvest of illegal fishing of sharks for their fins (change.org).

Editor’s comment

Anyone watching the video in which a Chinese official promises that China will make efforts to curb illegal fishing will not be very impressed. With a fleet of nearly 17,000 fishing vessels, enforcement is undoubtedly difficult, even if it is through Port State controls. Moreover, the official speaks unconvincingly of “attempts” and “gradual reduction”; not terms that show a burning ambition. And while China is known as a country capable of long-term thinking, even across generations, it is highly questionable here whether the short-term goal of lucrative trade does not prevail.

There is also much room for improvement ‘at home’. Just five years ago, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) called for ‘deterrent punitive measures’. The European fishing fleet comprises some 79,000 vessels and directly employs nearly 130,000 fishermen. The EU is also the world’s largest importer of fishery products, accounting for 34% of total world trade by value. And European fishermen are also known to catch fish off non-European coasts for local people, who are faced with the choice of migrating away or slaving away in poverty.

China’s sailing seafood factories, as well as those of Western countries, indulge in a serious form of neo-colonialism, plundering foreign coastal areas just for profit. That they are hardly hindered by prevailing laws and regulations is by no means an excuse; there is still such a thing as a moral compass. In money-hungry hands, however, that quickly gets a misdirection that quickly reduces it to a meaningless sham.

Anyone who follows even the non-maritime news a little can’t have missed the global ocean summit, and may even have seen the film ‘Oceans’ by and featuring David Attenborough. In it, the damage done by large-scale fishing to our planet’s most important ecosystem is well documented. In that light, it is to be hoped that the Chinese are serious about their promises, but we still think that ‘action speaks louder than words’.

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