March 24, 2025 — Steven Mana ‘oakamai Johnson, a Cornell University professor who grew up on Saipan, has devoted his life to studying the ocean and how people in the Pacific depend on the fish in it to feed themselves and support their economies. Lately he’s been studying when they fight over them.
He has been working on a Pentagon-funded project called “Future Fish Wars : Chasing Ocean Ecosystem Wealth, ” for which the military awarded a grant in 2023. It was looking at how illegal fishing, climate change and changing migration patterns of fish species could contribute to new conflicts between rival fishermen that could escalate into much larger confrontations—looking mostly at the Pacific and the Arctic.
“All the fisheries climate research shows that there’s going to be a reshuffling of the deck of where these trans-boundary fish stocks are going to end up, ” said Johnson. “It might be important to understand, you know, what is the texture of that scenario ? Who’s involved ? You know, where has fisheries conflict happened in the past, what was driving it ?”
The South China Sea, once considered among the world’s richest fishing grounds, has been depleted by years of industrialized fishing methods. Today, Chinese fishermen—backed by the Chinese military—have clashed violently with fishermen from neighboring countries, creating an increasingly militarized standoff. China has also sent its vast state-subsidized fishing fleet across the globe, with large groups of vessels descending on South America’s coastlines.