U.S. Military officials say illegal fishing is a threat to national security

• Illegal, unplanned and uncontrolled fishing is a global economic and security challenge.
• China is the biggest culprit, and U.S. officials say the growing competition for maritime resources is part of a wider competition with Beijing – and it could increase one.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Catching convoys or large catches to catch fish, sometimes illegally, from around the world, is a security challenge that has already led to an armed encounter, senior U.S. military officials said earlier this month.

Illegal, unplanned and uncontrolled fishing, as it is known, exploits countries’ inability to control their waters and poses an economic and security challenge. The Coast Guard says in its recent IUU fishing strategic vision.

“It’s bigger than catching some boats with illegal tuna. This is really about … a systemic violation of sovereignty, economic security, the weakening of the global rules-base order,” said Coast Guard Commandant Adam. Carl Schultz said last. Week at a think tank event.

According to the view, the I.U. Annual losses from phishing are expected to be in the tens of billions. Fish are a major source of food and economic activity, especially in Africa, Latin America, and Oceania.

Many countries are engaged in IUU fishing, but its probe into China, which has the world’s largest far-water fishing fleet, has increased and subsidized it.

“In the 1970s, in the 1980s, the Chinese drained their domestic waters and then began to look forward,” Philip Chow, a senior adviser to Onesia’s for-profit marine conservation group, told Insider.

It supplies Chinese ships to domestic and international markets, Cho said. “Increasingly now this expansion has to do with the investments these Chinese businesses have made in the global seafood trade, which they are finding very attractive.”

73,058 hours fishing

This summer the Chinese were annoyed by the distant underwater fishing, while in the fragile climate surrounding the Galapagos Islands, more than 300 fishing boats, many Chinese-flagged boats, gathered near Ecuador.

The boats arrived in July and departed this week, but Oceania found that between July 13 and August 13, about 300 of them spent 73,058 hours fishing outside Ecuador’s exclusive economic zone, mainly for squid.

The intensity of the phishing also raises concerns about the impact of the fleet globally, Oceania said in its report. Their actions also broke China’s own rules for sustainable fishing.

“Daily, for a period of more than eight hours, a significant portion of this fleet shuts down their automated information systems,” said Navy Adam, head of UV Southern Command. System.

“As a boatman with decades of experience, I can only tell you what happens at that kind of frequency and that length is to hide illegal activity,” Faller said.

Oceania found 43 cases during the long period of that month in which Chinese fishing boats were seen closing their AIS transponders with an average interval of two days. It could be a sign of illegal fishing or the boat is shifting their grip to refrigerator carrier ships, Cho said.

Those carrier ships can combine legally and illegally caught fish, “and it’s very difficult to figure out what happens when they arrive in port,” Cho said, adding that carriers allow boats to catch fish “indefinitely.”

‘Gin Gati’

There were many Chinese fishing boats outside of Ecuador and now they are fishing elsewhere around South America. Illegal fishing in the region’s coastal states is “at the top, if not the top, of their safety concerns,” Faller said.

“It directly affects the security of their livelihoods and the security of our partners – especially in this neighborhood … close to it – the homeland of the United States.”

Ecuador jailed Chinese fishing crews in 2017 after they caught them with endangered fish. Argentina fired on a sunken Chinese boat in 2016.

Those countries are “fighting the same illegal-fishing fight, and in fact it has been dynamic in Argentina,” Faller said.

Chinese ships have also been detained and fined around Africa. Despite these results, “the reactions in my mind are limited, owners, to who is ultimately responsible,” Choe said.

Fish cops

China has the largest long-distance water fleet and is caught up in most crimes, but the EU has “a long-range water-catching fleet” and often catches fish in West Africa, Cho said, citing Taiwan and South Korea as other large distances. -Water fishing.

Countries work together to prevent illegal fishing. Schultz told Insider in a 2018 interview that the Coast Guard had “good, functional working relations” with China; Other officials have said the same about Russia.

Multilateral bodies such as regional fisheries management institutes have been set up for the management of fisheries. But RFMOs “generally don’t run well,” Choe said. “There’s a lot that comes under their jurisdiction.”

Even with a physical presence the country tries to prevent illegal activity. U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bertholph patrolled the Galapagos Islands with the Ecuadorian navy in August Gust, and this month’s Cutter Kimball and the Bear returned from similar operations in Oceania and West Africa, respectively.

“I got a new fast response cutter in Guam today, followed by two additional fast response cutters. You’ll see more of those ships in those parts of the world,” Schultz said at the Sept. 17 event. . “I think we’ll consider taking some of our law enforcement connections [and] Presumably reintroduce them as fishing connections. “

Feller and Schultz combined competition for resources in the wider competition with China. Both said increasing the capacity and coordination of partners is key to that competition.

“It’s not about the coastguard fishing the world. We don’t have that capability,” Schultz said. “Our ability to securely share information with like-minded partners creates scales. It leads to a sharpening of the global threat posed by the risk of counter-narcotics from the risk of fishing.”