Ecuador sounded the alarm after its navy discovered a huge fishing fleet of mostly Chinese-flagged vessels about 200 miles from the Galapagos Islands, the archipelago that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
About 260 ships are currently in international waters outside a 188-mile-wide exclusive economic zone around the island, but their presence has already raised the possibility of serious damage to the delicate marine ecosystem, the former Minister of Environment said Atmosphere, Yolanda Kakabadse.
“The size and aggressiveness of this fleet against marine species is a major threat to the balance of species in the Galapagos,” he told The Guardian.
Kakabadse and a former Quito mayor, Roque Sevilla, were tasked on Monday with devising a “protection strategy” for the islands, which are 563 miles west of the South American continent.
Chinese fishing vessels reach the seas around the Galapagos each year, which were declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1978, but this year’s fleet is one of the biggest sights in recent years.
Seville said diplomatic efforts will be made to request the withdrawal of the Chinese fishing fleet. “Uncontrolled Chinese fishing right on the edge of the protected area is ruining Ecuador’s efforts to protect marine life in the Galapagos,” he said.
He added that the team would also seek to enforce international agreements that protect migratory species. The Galapagos Marine Reserve has one of the highest concentrations of shark species in the world, including endangered varieties of whales and hammerheads.
Kakabadse said efforts will also be made to extend the exclusive economic zone to a 350-mile circumference around the islands that would unite with the economic zone of the Ecuadorian continent, closing an international water corridor between the two where the Chinese fleet is currently located. .
Ecuador is also trying to establish a marine reserve corridor between Pacific neighbors, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia, which would seal important areas of marine diversity, Kakabadse said.
Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno described the archipelago as “one of the richest fishing areas and a hotbed of life for the entire planet,” in a message on Twitter over the weekend.
The Galapagos Islands are famous for their unique plants and wildlife. Unesco describes the archipelago, visited by a quarter of a million tourists each year, as a “living museum and a showcase for evolution”.
The Ecuadorian navy has been monitoring the fishing fleet since it was seen last week, according to the country’s defense minister, Oswaldo Jarrín. “We are on alert, (conducting) surveillance, patrolling to avoid an incident like what happened in 2017,” he said.
The 2017 incident to which he referred was the capture by the Ecuadorian navy within the Galapagos Marine Reserve of a Chinese ship. Part of an even larger fleet than the current one, Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 was found to carry 300 tons of marine fauna, mostly sharks.
“We were horrified to discover that a huge Chinese industrial fishing fleet is currently off the Galapagos Islands,” said John Hourston, a spokesman for the Blue Planet Society, an NGO campaigning against overfishing.
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