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In one month, the vast Chinese fishing fleet that appeared in mid-summer in the Galapagos Islands fished a total of more than 73,000 hours. Approximately 300 vessels were able to remove thousands of tons of prey from the waters.
The appearance of Chinese fishing boats near the archipelago has attracted a lot of attention in the summer. The Ecuadorian authorities have been constantly monitoring the movements of the fleet, as it is feared that Chinese ships will also enter the exclusive maritime areas of the Galapagos Islands from international waters in search of prey. This would pose a great threat to marine life there, but it would also affect the terrestrial ecosystem:
Mysterious ships appeared on the Galapagos Islands in Eden
The competent Ecuadorian authorities have detected a “large fleet” of fishing boats in the Galapagos Islands, according to local Reuters reports. Each year, fishing boats move closer and closer to the archipelago, and fishing there poses a serious threat to the fragile ecosystem of the world-famous archipelago. A large number of fishing boats, mostly Chinese, have been sighted some 1,000 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador in the Galapagos Islands in the Equatorial Region.
The Guardian, according to a recent report, said the roughly 300 ships remained out of the exclusive waters almost from July 13 to August 13. The report, published by Oceana in the United States, shows that Chinese ship captains have been very careful not to cross the limits of waters of exclusive economic interest and not even accidentally approach the complex nature reserve within them, that is, islands and water reserves. The following image shows that the vessels of the fleet remained in international waters outside these zones:
However, respecting administrative boundaries does not in itself guarantee that the wildlife of the Galapagos Islands is not threatened in any way by this type of industrial fishing activity in the vicinity.
Oceana, using a tool jointly developed by Global Fishing Watch and Google, has accurately documented the movements of the vessels, and its analysis could also be an important argument for the Ecuadorian government in a controversial situation. The Oceana report also notes that some vessels were presumed to be present in the fleet for transshipment purposes, that is, they did not fish with them, but only received the quantities taken by other vessels. This, in turn, is considered illegal under applicable international law.
“For a month, the world just watched and wondered what the sizeable Chinese fleet could do near the Galapagos Islands, but now we know exactly,” says Maria Valentine, Oceana’s analyst on illegal fishing.
According to the report, the main objective of the fleet was to catch squid; These, in turn, are also popular foods for Galapagos sea lions and endangered hammerhead sharks. Chinese ships have also caught large numbers of various other species, such as tuna, which in turn play an important role in the local economy of the islands.
The total amount of dams can be thousands of tons. – They claim in the organization.
The Galapagos Marine Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage site, with a total marine area of 133,000 square kilometers around the islands. Biodiversity is particularly valuable in this part of the ocean, where 20 percent of the marine species that live here are found nowhere else in the world.
China has the largest fishing fleet in the world and accounts for a third of world fish consumption. China has previously been outlawed by various critics and overfishing, which has repeatedly targeted endangered shark species. According to some reports, various irregularities arise regularly around Chinese industrial fishing, ranging from false licenses to distorted catch data and forced labor.
China ranked last in 2019 based on the IUU fishing index, which makes countries comparable in terms of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Various initiatives for sustainable fishing draw attention to the fact that illegal and unregulated fishing is very often linked to other transnational forms of organized crime, such as trafficking in human beings or drugs and piracy at sea.
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