Saving Seafood

China’s New Year gift to the world: aquaculture know-how

February 5, 2019 — As Chinese New Year approaches, the dining halls of China’s Agriculture Ministry in the central Beijing district of Tuanjiehu get busy with well-wishers from various embassies dropping in with seasonal gifts or for banquets with officials.

Emissaries in Beijing have been beating a path to the fisheries section at the Agriculture Ministry to greet fisheries officials who maintain relations with counterparts in most countries on the planet.

The gifts aren’t just flowing in one direction. Even as it weeds out low-tech and unlicensed operators in its own aquaculture sector, China is offering aquaculture expertise to developing nations throughout the world.  When Chinese New Year festivities are over, it’s not unreasonable to expect a whole new range of training programs to be born out of those banquets and gift exchanges. These are transactional relationships – developing countries need training and China needs seafood. But they also stand to change the global aquaculture production map.

And it’s not new – China has been at this game for many years now. Just last month, aquaculture officials from around the world were in China’s key freshwater training base for training in bass (perch) production. Delegates from Benin, Ghana, Laos, Liberia, Myanmar, the Seychelles, South Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia were in Wuxi Academy and visited Jiangsu Shui Xian Industry Co. Ltd. to see production on site.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Chinese government orders fishing boats to behave during G-20 summit

November 30, 2018 — Beijing has issued a notice to Chinese fishing boats operating overseas, warning them to avoid illegal activities during the G-20 summit in Argentina this weekend.

The country’s Agricultural Ministry released a statement this week asking Chinese offshore fishing enterprises to stay at least three nautical miles away from other countries’ marine exclusive economic zones. This distance will ensure that violations such as cross-border fishing don’t occur, it said.

These measures are designed to protect China’s image as a responsible great power and prevent any violations of foreign laws during the G-20, the ministry said.

Read the full story at CNBC

A Nearly Invisible Oil Spill Threatens Some of Asia’s Richest Fisheries

February 13, 2018 — ZHOUSHAN, China — A fiery collision that sank an Iranian tanker in the East China Sea a month ago has resulted in an environmental threat that experts say is unlike any before: An almost invisible type of petroleum has begun to contaminate some of the most important fishing grounds in Asia, from China to Japan and beyond.

It is the largest oil spill in decades, but the disaster has unfolded outside the glare of international attention that big spills have previously attracted. That is because of its remote location on the high seas and also the type of petroleum involved: condensate, a toxic, liquid byproduct of natural gas production.

Unlike the crude oil in better-known disasters like the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon, condensate does not clump into black globules that can be easily spotted or produce heart-wrenching images of animals mired in muck. There’s no visible slick that can be pumped out. Experts said the only real solution is to let it evaporate or dissolve. Absorbed into the water, it will remain toxic for a time, though it will also disperse more quickly into the ocean than crude oil.

Experts say there has never been so large a spill of condensate; up to 111,000 metric tons has poured into the ocean. It has almost certainly already invaded an ecosystem that includes some of the world’s most bountiful fisheries off Zhoushan, the archipelago that rises where the Yangtze River flows into the East China Sea.

The area produced five million tons of seafood of up to four dozen species for China alone last year, according to Greenpeace, including crab, squid, yellow croaker, mackerel and a local favorite, hairtail. If projections are correct, the toxins could soon make their way into equally abundant Japanese fisheries.

Exposure to condensate is extremely unhealthy to humans and potentially fatal. The effects of eating fish contaminated with it remain essentially untested, but experts strongly advise against doing so.

“This is an oil spill of a type we haven’t seen before,” said Paul Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter in England. “Working out the impact is actually a huge task — probably next to impossible.”

For China, the disaster has become a test of its ambitions as a global and regional steward of the seas, especially at a time when it is reinforcing its territorial claims, including disputed territories with Japan in these waters. Given its proximity, China has taken the lead in investigating the disaster and monitoring the spill, but it has faced some criticism for what some see as a slow and inadequate response thus far.

Officials in Beijing announced on Feb. 1 that samples of fish taken within four to five nautical miles of the sunken ship contained traces of petroleum hydrocarbons, suggesting possible condensate contamination; they pledged to expand the range of testing to 90 miles, and closely monitor fish coming into markets.

Read the full story at the New York Times

James G. Stavridis & Johan Bergenas: The fishing wars are coming

September 14, 2017 — Lawmakers are finally catching up to something that the Navy and Coast Guard have known for a long time: The escalating conflict over fishing could lead to a “global fish war.”

This week, as part of the pending National Defense Authorization Act, Congress asked the Navy to help fight illegal fishing. This is an important step. Greater military and diplomatic efforts must follow. Indeed, history is full of natural-resource wars, including over sugar, spices, textiles, minerals, opium and oil. Looking at current dynamics, fish scarcity could be the next catalyst.

The decline in nearly half of global fish stocks in recent decades is a growing and existential threat to roughly 1 billion people around the world who rely on seafood as their primary source of protein. No other country is more concerned about the increasingly empty oceans than China, whose people eat twice as much fish as the global average. Beijing is also the world’s largest exporter of fish, with 14 million fishers in a sector producing billions of dollars a year.

In order to keep its people fed and employed, the Chinese government provides hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subsidies to its distant-water fishing fleet. And in the South China Sea, it is common for its ships to receive Chinese Coast Guard escorts when illegally entering other countries’ fishing waters. As such, the Chinese government is directly enabling and militarizing the worldwide robbing of ocean resources.

Read the full opinion piece at the Washington Post

Air China bans shark fin cargo, reflecting dramatic shift in attitudes

January 9, 2017 — BEIJING — Air China has become the first airline in mainland China to ban shark fin cargo, marking a dramatic shift in attitudes toward trade in endangered wildlife here and throwing a lifeline to shark populations threatened with imminent extinction.

The news, released late Friday, came just a week after China announced plans to ban its domestic ivory trade, a landmark decision of vital importance in ending an epidemic of elephant poaching in Africa.

It marks the country’s gradual transformation from being the biggest source of the problem — as the largest market in illegal wildlife products — to becoming a major part of the solution.

“Scientists estimate that fins from up to 73 million sharks a year are used for shark’s fin soup, with much of the trade in shark fin destined for China,” said Alex Hofford, a wildlife activist from the conservation group WildAid in Hong Kong, which applauded Air China for taking “an ethical stance” to help protect sharks and oceans. “It’s a bold move, and this is likely to have a huge and lasting impact on shark populations and marine ecosystems worldwide.”

Hofford said the decision by China’s national flag carrier “puts FedEx to shame” — the U.S. multinational courier company has resisted repeated calls to take a similar step, despite a petition signed by 300,000 people, and an appeal from a coalition of animal welfare conservation groups who expressed concerns that its service could be used to carry fins of endangered shark species. That would be a violation of the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Taiwan Protests Exclusion From UN Fisheries Conference

September 22, 2016 — BEIJING — Taiwan has protested its exclusion from a United Nations conference on the global fishing industry, allegedly at the behest of chief rival China, the official Central News Agency reported.

CNA said in a report late Wednesday that the Foreign Ministry delivered a letter to the Food and Agricultural Organization protesting against what it called “discriminatory treatment” against two Taiwanese representatives who were barred from the organization’s Committee on Fisheries meeting being held in Italy this week.

It said China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan, was behind their rejection but did not say how that information was obtained.

Taiwanese representatives had participated in the biennial conference since 2003 as experts or members of non-governmental organizations.

As a major deep-sea fishing nation, Taiwan had argued that its presence at the conference was appropriate and necessary.

However, the exclusions are seen as the latest sign of how China is tightening the diplomatic screws on Taiwan as a way of pressuring the island’s new independence-leaning president, Tsai Ing-wen.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

China Suppresses Protests in Fishing Village, Arresting 13

September 13, 2016 — BEIJING — Chinese police fired rubber bullets at villagers and arrested 13 people Tuesday in an overnight crackdown to suppress demonstrations in a southern fishing village that became internationally known five years ago for protesting land seizures.

Police stormed into the village of Wukan in the southern province of Guangdong and arrested leaders of ongoing demonstrations in their homes. Videos posted on social media show one person with blood on his arm and chest, and another being treated for an apparent bullet wound on his hand.

Another video shows a line of black police vans streaming into the village, a hamlet of about 13,000 people on the South China Sea near Hong Kong.

Wukan carries symbolic importance due to the success of 2011 protests that broke out over land seizures and corruption. Villagers were able to expel government officials and police, and barricaded the village. The siege was resolved only after the provincial secretary of China’s ruling Communist Party agreed to allow a local election.

The winner of that election was Lin Zuluan, a former protest leader. Lin was planning to lead a new round of protests this year over more land grabs. Instead, authorities detained him and then charged him with taking bribes.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Beware the invasion of China’s ‘little green boats’

September 1, 2016 — In early August, Japan’s coast guard witnessed an unconventional Chinese assault on its territorial waters.

According to Japanese officials I met with last week, at least 300 Chinese “fishing vessels” began incursions into the exclusive economic zone around the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, disputed territory administered by Japan but claimed by China and Taiwan as well.

Japan has seen similar probing activities for years. But in August, the Chinese escalated. There were far more boats than before, and the Chinese sent armed coast guard vessels to accompany these “fishermen.”

This may sound fairly benign compared to the shooting wars in Ukraine and Syria. But for Japan, the matter could not be more serious. Its military assesses that many of these sailors are really Chinese militia irregulars, similar to the non-uniformed “little green men” whom Russia has sent to eastern Ukraine to stir up separatist sentiment. Call them “little green boats.”

Nonetheless, Japan has gone out of its way not to take China’s bait and respond militarily. Instead, it sends its own coast guard to escort the boats and inform them of their trespassing over loudspeakers.

Diplomatically, Japanese officials have taken to lodging angry, formal complaints in late-night phone calls to their Chinese counterparts, a tactic usually favored by Beijing’s envoys.

There are three reasons Americans should watch the rising tensions in the East China Sea carefully.

Read  the full story at the New York Post 

Indonesia Accuses China of Treating Fishing Waters as Own

June 21, 2016 — Indonesia signaled a harder stance over incursions by Chinese fishing boats in its waters, saying the encroachments appeared to be part of an effort by Beijing to extend its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Indonesia’s navy last week detained a vessel fishing off the Natuna Islands and arrested seven fishermen after firing warning shots in the air, according to Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi. China’s foreign ministry said the men were operating in “China’s traditional fishing” grounds, “where China and Indonesia have overlapping claims for maritime rights and interests.”

“We suspect that this is structured activity because they were guarded, which means that it was blessed by the government,” Rear Admiral A. Taufiq R., commander of Indonesia’s Western Fleet, told reporters on Tuesday in Jakarta, adding the fishing boat was shot at when it refused to stop and that no one was injured. “That was why China raised a protest, because they think that the area is theirs.”

More Chinese fishing boats have been detected in the vicinity this year, he said. “We need to resolve this issue. If not, they will make a one-sided claim to the waters.”

Read the full story at Bloomberg

How China’s fishermen are fighting a covert war in the South China Sea

April 13, 2016 — TANMEN, China — In the disputed waters of the South China Sea, fishermen are the wild card.

China is using its vast fishing fleet as the advance guard to press its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, experts say. That is not only putting Beijing on a collision course with its Asian neighbors, but also introducing a degree of unpredictability that raises the risks of periodic crises.

In the past few weeks, tensions have flared with Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam as Chinese fishermen, often backed up by coast guard vessels, have ventured far from their homeland and close to other nations’ coasts. They are just the latest conflicts in China’s long-running battle to expand its fishing grounds and simultaneously exert its maritime dominance.

See the full story at The Washington Post