Juan Carlos Sueiro Archives

January 7, 2019 — China’s “insatiable appetite” for seafood is straining the limited abilities of South American countries to enforce their maritime boundaries, according to a December 13 article in Dialogo, a website run by US Southern Command.

Countries on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts have been affected, and most of the illicit fishing activity in those areas is done by Chinese vessels.

Juan Carlos Sueiro, fisheries director for Peru at the ocean conservation and advocacy organization Oceana, told Dialogo that Peru and Argentina saw “the largest congregation of these vessels in the world.”

“It’s not that they can’t fish in international waters, but their close presence generates controversy. For example, Oceana already identified vessels entering into Peruvian waters without a license or with duplicated ID,” Sueiro said.

Read the full story at Business Insider

October 17th, 2016 — At least a dozen Chinese vessels have illegally fished inside Peru’s national waters between January 2015 and September 2016, according to data analyzed by the satellite tracking platform Global Fishing Watch. This data suggests that over the course of the last year, Hong Pu5, Shung Feng 002 and several other vessels entered Peruvian waters at least once to fish in violation of international law.

Global Fishing Watch — a joint initiative of Oceana, SkyTruth and Google — uses navigation technology known as the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to track the movements of nearly 40,000 commercial fishing vessels around the world. AIS transmits a vessel’s identity, type, location, course and speed. Global Fishing Watch’s algorithm uses this information to identify fishing patterns, which helps fisheries officials and enforcement agencies spot potential criminal activity.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), illegal fishing in Peru is responsible for $360 million in losses each year. Peru is something of a “paradise” for pirate fishing, said Juan Carlos Sueiro, Oceana Peru’s fisheries director.

While neighbors Colombia, Chile and Ecuador have ratified a new FAO treaty aimed at curbing the trade in illegal fish in port cities, Peru has dragged its heels. As a result, Sueiro said, Chinese and other foreign vessels suspected of illegal fishing can freely dock, refuel, buy food and offload their catch in Peru.

Read the full story at Oceana

The US military is warning that China’s fishing boats are bullies and could start a war on the high seas

Satellite Tracking Spots Suspicious Activity from 12 Chinese Fishing Vessels in Peruvian Waters