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CHINESE FLEETS ACCOUNT FOR 69% OF ILLEGAL FISHING OFF ARGENTINA
- By The Financial District
- Jun 4, 2021
- 2 min read
A new analysis released on June 2021 finds hundreds of foreign fishing vessels, primarily Chinese, pillaging the waters off Argentina and disappearing from public tracking systems, Oceana, a marine conservation group, reported from Washington, D.C.
These distant-water fleets mainly fish for shortfin squid, which are vital to Argentina’s economy and the diet of numerous commercial and recreational species, such as tuna and swordfish, since half of the world’s shortfin squid production comes from these waters. Argentina’s coast guard has clashed with illegal Chinese fishing vessels and sunk one of them years ago for poaching.
Oceana analyzed the activity of fishing vessels along the border of Argentina’s national waters from January 1, 2018 to April 25, 2021, using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data from Global Fishing Watch (GFW), an independent nonprofit founded by Oceana in partnership with Google and SkyTruth and documented more than 800 foreign vessels logging more than 900,000 total hours of apparent fishing.
The analysis also revealed that 69% of this fishing activity was conducted by more than 400 Chinese vessels, mainly squid jiggers. In comparison to the foreign fleets, 145 of Argentina’s fishing vessels conducted 9,269 hours of visible fishing in this area during the same period — less than 1% of the total amount.
“Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing threatens the health of the oceans. The vessels that disappear along the edge of the national waters of Argentina could be pillaging its waters illegally,” said Oceana’s deputy vice president of US campaigns, Beth Lowell.
“A recent study found the United States imported an estimated $2.4 billion worth of seafood derived from IUU fishing in 2019. The US can take action to address IUU fishing by requiring that all seafood imports have catch documentation to demonstrate it was legally caught, implementing full-chain traceability, and making transparency a condition of import.”
