On March 14, 2016, a rusty Chinese boat called the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was fishing illegally a few miles inside Argentine seas in the squid grounds off the coast of Patagonia. The specifically designed squid-fishing ship, called a “jigger,” was spotted by an Argentine coast-guard patrol and was given the order to stop over the radio. After that, it left the area. The Argentinians pursued and fired alerts. The coast-guard cutter then opened fire straight on the jigger when the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 attempted to ram it; as a result, the jigger quickly sank.
The Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was illegally sunk in 2017, and a year later, the Federal Fishing Council of Argentina made a little-noticed announcement that it was awarding fishing licenses to two foreign vessels, allowing them to operate in Argentine waters. Through a local front firm, both would fly the Argentine flag, but the CNFC was actually their real “beneficial” owner. (Apologies for the lack of response from the CNFC.)
Although the local government’s action was contradictory, it is becoming more and more typical in Argentina and other parts of the world. China has dominated the high seas with over 6,000 distant-water ships, more than three times the size of the next largest country fleet, giving it the upper hand in global fishing for the last thirty years. Chinese fishing vessels usually sat “on the outside” when it came to penetrating foreign waterways. They would park in international waters near sea boundaries and then make incursions into domestic waters. But in recent years, China has adopted a “softer” tack, taking control from the inside by paying to “flag-in” its ships so that it may be seen in South America, Africa, and the far Pacific. Fishing is permitted in domestic waterways. Subtler than just fishing illegally off foreign coasts, the strategy is less likely to cause political unrest, negative publicity, or sinking ships.
China has managed to get around legislation in many countries requiring boats that fish in their seas to be locally owned. These laws are meant to maintain profits within the nation and make it easier to police fishing limits. Chinese businesses cooperate with locals, or they may even sell or lease their ships to them, but they still keep all financial and decision-making authority. Or they use “access agreements” to purchase passage into nearby waterways.
The majority of Argentina’s squid fleet, consisting of at least 62 industrial squid-fishing vessels flying the Argentine flag, is currently owned by Chinese businesses. Numerous of these businesses have been connected to numerous offenses, such as abandoning fish in the ocean, disabling their transponders, and committing fraud and tax evasion. A considerable portion of the seafood captured by these vessels is shipped to the US, Canada, Italy, and Spain, but trade records indicate that the majority of the catch is returned to China. Nearly 250 of these flagged-in ships are currently in operation throughout the world, including several that are based in Iran, Micronesia, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, and Morocco.
For the first time, the true size of this hidden fleet, as well as the extent of its illegal behavior, concentration in certain foreign waters, and the amount of seafood that ends up in European and American markets, have been made public thanks to a four-year investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project into the global seafood supply chain. This investigation involved reporting at sea on several ships, including to the waters of Argentina, the Falkland Islands, near Korea, and the Galapagos Islands.
In order to retain revenues domestically and facilitate the enforcement of fishing laws, the majority of national fisheries demand that vessels be owned locally, according to Duncan Copeland, the former executive director of Trigg Mat Tracking, a nonprofit research group that focuses on marine crime. “Flagging-in defeats those objectives.”
China has made clear how this strategy fits into its bigger goals. Chinese fisheries officials and representatives of the Zhejiang Ocean Family described in an academic paper published in 2023 how they have heavily depended on Chinese companies, for example, to breach Argentina’s territorial waters through “leasing and transfer methods,” and how this is part of a global policy.
Experts said that given Argentine regulations that forbid foreign-owned ships from flying Argentina’s flag or fishing in its waters, as well as the prohibition against granting fishing licenses to ship operators with records of illegal fishing in Argentine waters, they were perplexed by the government’s decision to flag in Chinese-owned vessels following the sinking of the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10. Former Argentine minister of fisheries Eduardo Pucci described it as “a total contradiction.”
The trend is most noticeable in Africa, where at least nine countries on the continent have at least one Chinese company operating a ship flying the flag of Ghana. In Ghana, for example, over 135 Chinese fishing ships are operating in national waters, despite the fact that foreign investment in fishing is technically illegal. Nonetheless, the most recent data available, from a 2018 analysis by the advocacy group Environmental Justice Foundation, shows that up to 95% of Ghana’s industrial trawling fleet is under some degree of Chinese influence.
In the waters off Morocco, China has also taken the place of European Union fishing vessels. Numerous ships, the majority of which were from Spain, have recently fished inside Morocco’s exclusive economic zone with authorization from the African nation’s government. However, the agreement expired in 2023, and as of right moment, China is using at least six flagged-in ships in Moroccan territorial seas. China’s influence is also expanding on the other side of the Pacific. According to a 2022 study published by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Chinese ships search the waters of Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia after flagging-in or signing access agreements with those nations.
The research issued a warning, stating that Chinese boats operate in oceans far from China’s borders and that the increase in their harvests poses a threat to the already severe depletion of world fisheries.
The need for fish has exceeded what can be responsibly caught, as the demand for seafood has risen globally since the 1960s. Currently, overfishing has affected nearly one-third of global stocks, as reported by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The growth of foreign industrial fishing ships, particularly those from China, threatens to deplete the domestic fish stocks of the global south, endangering local livelihoods and undermining food security by exporting a vital source of protein. This inexpensive and seemingly plentiful seafood that is caught or processed in China benefits Western consumers, especially those in Europe, the United States, and Canada.
“Communities that depend on the same fish are harmed by illegal and abusive fishing,” states Dyhia Belhabib, a principle investigator at Eco trust Canada, a nonprofit organization that promotes environmental advocacy. This indicates that their food supplies are running low and that their hopes for future economic growth from this extremely precious resource are being destroyed.
But the issues surrounding China’s increasing dominance over the world’s seafood supply and its incursion into other countries’ near-shore waters extend far beyond issues of ocean sustainability and food security. Crimes including labor abuses are commonplace on Chinese fishing vessels.
According to the Outlaw Ocean Project’s investigation, over 50 ships owned by Chinese companies and registered under the flags of twelve different countries have committed crimes over the last six years, including forced labor, illegal fishing, and unauthorized transshipmentâthe transfer of catch from ships to carrier ships that then return it to shore. A Ghanaian fisheries observer once vanished from sight while at work on the ship. Frequently shutting off their automated tracking systems for more than a day at a time when in the Pacific, frequently along the edge of an exclusive economic zone, was a pattern displayed by four of the vessels. According to maritime researchers, a vessel “going dark” increases the danger of illegal fishing and transshipment because
According to research conducted by the Outlaw Ocean Project, near the port of Montevideo, Uruguay, one dead person has been dumped on average every other month for the majority of the last ten years, primarily from Chinese squid ships. A B1 vitamin deficiency, usually from eating too much white rice or instant noodles, can cause beriberi, a form of malnutrition that is easily preventable and reversible and is considered by experts to be a warning sign of criminal neglect. This vitamin deficiency has killed some of the workers on these ships. Based on the findings, at least 24 workers on 14 Chinese fishing ships experienced beriberi symptoms between 2013 and 2021. At least 15 of them perished. Additionally, the study revealed numerous instances of forced labor, theft of wages, assault, passport seizure, and lack of access to healthcare.
A large number of these crimes have occurred outside of any nation’s territorial jurisdiction, on the high seas. However, a growing number of Chinese-owned fishing boats are plying the local waters of countries where enforcement is, at best, patchy because the governments do not have the resources, the coast guard ships, or the political will to board and inspect the ships.
A team of reporters from The Outlaw Ocean Project boarded a Chilean fishing ship in Punta Arenas, Chile, in January 2019 as part of the four-year investigation. There, the crew reported witnessing a Chinese captain on a nearby squid ship beating and slapping deckhands. Later that year, while covering news at sea off the coast of Gambia, a country in West Africa, the same group of journalists boarded a Chinese vessel known as the Victory 205. They discovered six African crew members dozing on foam mattresses soaked in seawater in a small, extremely hot crawl area above the ship’s engine room. The ship was subsequently taken into custody by the local authorities for this labor and other infractions. (The Victory 205’s owners remained silent.) response to a comment request.)
An 18-year-old Chinese deckhand anxiously pleaded to be saved when the Outlaw Ocean Project reporters boarded a Chinese squid jigger in February 2022 in the high seas close to the Falkland Islands. He explained that his passports and the passports of the other workers had been seized. He said, “Can you take us to the embassy in Argentina?” In order to record living circumstances, the reporting crew boarded a second Chinese fishing ship in international waters close to the Galapagos Islands around four months later. The thirty men on the crew had thousand-yard stares, as if they were in suspended animation. Their skin was pale, their palms spongy from touching raw squid, and their teeth yellowed from smoking. A slick oozing of squid ink covered the flooring and walls. The deck employees uttered They put in fifteen hours a day, six days a week. The majority of the time, they were knee-deep in squid, keeping an eye on the reels to make sure they did not clog, and throwing their catch into overflowing baskets to be sorted later. A cook below deck mixed chunks of squid and quick noodles in a rice cooker. He claimed that the ship had run out of fruit and vegetables, which is a regular reason for deadly starvation at sea.