HomeNewsChinese Fishing Fleet Still Baits Argentina
NEWS

Chinese Fishing Fleet Still Baits Argentina

ARGENTINA / 7 JUN 2021 BY ALESSANDRO FORD EN

China’s distant-water fishing fleet is once again engaging in suspicious and potentially illegal fishing near Argentine waters, demonstrating the limits of both regional and Chinese government attempts to rope in the country’s industry.

This year, in a re-run of last summer’s diplomatic debacle, some 350 Chinese-flagged vessels have been fishing off the Argentine coast since December, depleting fishing stocks and extending their stay via unregulated transshipments – a controversial practice of transferring catch onto a mother ship that allows vessels to launder illegally caught fish.

Between January 2018 and April 2021, satellite data shows that over 400 Chinese-flagged vessels – mostly squid jiggers that use bright lamps to draw squid to the surface at night – pillaging the waters just outside Argentine territory for over 621,000 hours, according to a report released June 2 by conservation NGO Oceana. 

In over 4,000 incidents, however, these vessels disappeared from public tracking systems for over 24 hours, most likely by turning off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) to avoid detection,  a controversial practice that often masks criminal behavior such as crossing into sovereign waters to fish illegally, notes the report.

SEE ALSO: French Guiana’s Unpatrolled Waters Lure Illegal Fishing Crews

This three-year period includes April 2020, when some 100 squid jiggers, mostly Chinese-flagged, were caught fishing in Argentina’s national waters with their public tracking devices apparently turned off, according to Pesca Con Ciencia.

Given the fleet’s annual fishing routes, the Chinese fleet will soon be heading parallel to Chilean and then Peruvian waters. In response to the threat the fleet poses, Peru has strengthened its counter-illegal fishing legislation, while Chile is relying on heavier maritime surveillance protocols.

InSight Crime Analysis

The Chinese fishing fleet continues to constitute a profound and perennial threat to Argentina’s sovereignty, economy and biodiversity, with one expert calling the conflict “a literal war” over the billions of dollars in fish exports and survival of certain marine habitats.

After last year’s events, Argentina took firm action to combat Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, which constitutes the sixth most lucrative global criminal economy, with estimated revenues of $15 to 36 billion, according to a 2017 report by Global Financial Integrity. Introducing stronger legislation, increasing fines and expanding maritime surveillance led the country to capture in 2020 the highest number of illegal vessels since 2006.

Likewise, the Chinese government appeared to take some, albeit minor, steps. These included closing squid-catching seasons for Chinese boats in certain South American waters from July to November and revising various articles in its Fisheries Law, including the blacklisting of repeat IUU-fishing offenders.

SEE ALSO: Chinese Fishing Fleet Leaves Ecuador, Chile, Peru Scrambling to Respond

However, it has remained intransigent in other areas. Despite holding out hope that it would finally ratify the 2016 Port State Measures Agreement – designed to combat IUU fishing -- China still has not done so, and despite capping fuel subsidies for domestic fishing, it continues to artificially sustain its distant-water fishing vessels with an estimated $400 million annual fuel subsidy.

Nor has it cooperated much with its South American counterparts. For example, while vessels intent on IUU fishing can easily turn off their AIS, it is harder to turn off their Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), which transmits confidential location information to the vessel’s flag state at set intervals.

Sharing VMS data on its distant-water fleet would therefore be an effective way for China to crack down on bad actors – yet when, during a commission for a South Pacific fisheries management body in early 2021, Chile proposed a measure allowing coastal states to request VMS data from nearby fishing boats, China outright refused.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

ARGENTINA / 17 AUG 2022

Argentina Judge Sabrina Namer explains why criminal courts should include gender perspectives in their decisions.

COSTA RICA / 27 JUL 2022

The installation of a radar tower on Costa Rica’s Cocos Island heralded a new era for curbing illegal fishing in…

BRAZIL / 8 AUG 2023

Legal protections for the Amazon rainforest are complicated by different domestic laws and competing interests across countries.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…