[Translated by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre]

"Chinese fleet threatens Latin America's fishing wealth" - 15 August 2022

... Illegal and excessive fishing, mainly attributed to Chinese fleets, remains a threat to marine resources in the eastern Pacific and southwest Atlantic, as well as to that sector of the economy in Latin American countries bordering both oceans.... Worldwide, "one out of every five fish consumed has been caught illegally, 20 percent of the nearly 100 million tonnes of fish consumed each year, and generally in areas closed to fishing," Juan José Cárdenas, an experienced Venezuelan oceanographer, told IPS... An emblematic case, he said, is that of the Galápagos Islands..., 1,000 kilometres west of the mainland coast of Ecuador, surrounded by a protected marine area of 193,000 square kilometres, a hotbed of species in great demand for human consumption.... The Ecuadorian navy said in June it was keeping an eye on 180 foreign vessels, including fishing boats, tankers and reefers, fishing near the 200-nautical-mile (370km) limit of the Galapagos Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), also known as the continental shelf... In 2017, 297 vessels were detected, in 2018 about 300, in 2019 about 245, and 350 in 2020. At the beginning of each northern summer, they fish off the waters of Ecuador and Peru, then offshore off Chile, cross the Strait of Magellan, and head up the southwest Atlantic off Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil... According to the satellite tracking platform Global Fishing Watch, 615 vessels did so in 2021, of which 584 were Chinese... The Peruvian Alfonso Miranda, president of the Committee for the Sustainable Management of the Giant Squid of the South Pacific, made up of businessmen and fishermen from Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru, said that this year 631 Chinese-flagged vessels have entered Ecuadorian and Peruvian waters in the Pacific... And for the FAO it is clear that "illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a global problem that compromises the conservation and sustainable use of fishery resources," the expert said... It also "damages the livelihoods of fishers and related activities, and aggravates malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity"...