“China’s fishing fleet raises concerns off Argentina”

Beijing has been sending its squid fishing fleet off the coast of Argentina for years. Lately, the boats have been accompanied by concerns about overfishing and potential surveillance.

[...] The size of the flotilla has increased by nearly 50% over the last decade. In that time, Buenos Aires has bulked up its surveillance to ensure the fleet doesn’t fish in the exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, where Argentina controls all maritime resources.

[...] Fears of overfishing just outside the country’s waters remain, as do suspicions of intelligence gathering [...]. Under international law, only Argentina can explore and exploit resources on its shelf. [...] The Pentagon is concerned by activities that “challenge the ability of sovereign nations to manage their own waters” and is “aware of global concerns regarding the dual-use nature of certain distant-water fishing fleets,” the spokesperson said. [...] “They are fishing savagely in the area,” said Marcela Ivanovic, a squid specialist at Argentina’s National Institute for Fisheries Research and Development.

China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement [...] that the suspicions of intelligence gathering around the fishing fleet were “pure speculation, lacking any factual basis.” “China is a responsible fishing nation, strictly enforcing the regulation of its distant-water fishing activities and engaging in mutually beneficial fisheries cooperation with relevant countries in accordance with international law,” the ministry said. [...] Argentine officials notified Beijing when incidents of possible seabed mapping were spotted [...]. The Chinese officials replied with “ambiguous” excuses about why the trajectory of a boat had been altered.