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Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Maritime conflict heats up as China’s fishing fleet goes dark in Argentine waters

With electronic tracking devices turned off, mostly Chinese fishing boats are raiding foreign waters for fish and even human beings.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CN) — Since 2018, foreign vessels have spent close to 1 million hours fishing between Argentina’s maritime border and the high seas, yet spent 600,000 hours ‘in the dark,’ suspected of illegal fishing within Argentine waters in the South Atlantic, according to a report by the ocean conservation organization Oceana.

Going dark refers to when ships appear to disable their electronic tracking devices, or Automatic Identification Systems (AIS), and is associated with illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which fuels overfishing and undermines efforts to protect the seas and oceans.

IUU fishing draws in global revenues of $10 billion to $36 billion per year and is entangled with other illicit activities such as human trafficking, corruption, and organized crime.

The majority of the ships (69%) detected around Argentine waters were Chinese, with vessels from South Korea, Taiwan and Spain making up another 25%. In terms of the total amount of fishing time in the waters, Chinese vessels made up 70% while Argentine vessels consisted of less than 1%. The dominant vessel used in the region was the squid jigger, which is geared toward catching the lucrative Argentine shortfin squid that is part of the rich and diverse marine life found in Argentina’s vast waters.

Fishing the shortfin squid is big money — particularly in Argentina. It represents the second-largest squid fishery in the world, and half of the global catch comes from the waters of Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The shortfin squid can generate anywhere between $597 million and $2.4 billion a year.

According to Oceana’s report, turning off AIS equipment is tied up with illegal fishing. “This connection was particularly evident in April 2020, when approximately 100 squid jiggers, mostly Chinese-flagged, were allegedly caught fishing illegally within Argentina’s EEZ, each with their AIS turned off," the report says.

Encounters between the Argentine coast guard and illegal fishing vessels have boiled over into conflict.

In 2016, Argentina’s coast guard chased and sank the Chinese fishing ship Lu Yan Yuan Yu, suspected of fishing illegally in Argentine waters, after attempting to make radio contact and firing warning shots failed to deter the ship. Two years later, four other Chinese boasts maneuvered themselves to protect a vessel fleeing the coast guard.

In 2019, the Argentine coast guard again fired on a Chinese boat it claimed was illegally fishing in its exclusive economic zone.

The most high-profile conflict occurred in 2016, when a Chinese squid jigger was spotted illegally fishing in Argentine waters before fleeing into the sanctuary of the high seas. Argentina requested help from Interpol to catch the vessel. Two months passed by before the Indonesian Navy spotted the ship and arrested those on board. They found illegally caught squid as well as four Indonesian crew members that were victims of human trafficking — shining a sharp light on the practices of modern-day slavery in the fishing industry.

China’s presence in South American waters extends beyond the South Atlantic. Its fishing vessels swing around the southern tip of Argentina and head north into the Pacific along the coastlines of Chile, Peru and Ecuador. 

As China casts broader nets into South American waters, it’s generating more and more accusations of illegal fishing that is heating a simmering maritime conflict.

In 2017, the Ecuadorian authorities detained a Chinese ship accused of fishing for jumbo squid in the highly diverse and protected waters around the Galápagos Islands. They arrested dozens of its crew members and repurposed the ship for the Ecuadorian Navy.

The greater maritime tension in South American waters coincides with the increasingly closer relationship between China and Latin America. Since the start of the 21st century, the growth of trade and investment has accelerated as China feeds its growing appetite for soybeans, iron, copper, and petroleum while Latin American nations are hungry for greater export markets.

Although Latin America is not a high priority on Beijing’s agenda, its engagement with the region is part of its broader international initiatives. 

“China’s engagement in the region helps it achieve a wide range of domestic and foreign policy objectives,” said Matthew P. Funaiole, a senior fellow with the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “It’s important not to divorce the economic from the political nor the military.”

Pressure from Beijing has led multiple countries to break official ties with Taiwan, such as Panama, which severed diplomatic ties months before endorsing China’s global infrastructure development project the Belt and Road Initiative.

China has also become “a significant arms exporter” in the region, added Funaiole, “and some countries in the region are eager for Chinese technology, which often offer a level of technological sophistication they wouldn’t have access to otherwise or come at a cheaper cost than American or European alternatives. Strong economic ties open the door for China to pursue its political and security objectives – and many countries are eager for closer ties with Beijing.”

While Beijing has been cultivating closer relations with Latin American countries, Washington has been occupied with different foreign policy concerns. “U.S. officials are often focused on issues that, sadly, leave LAC as a secondary concern,” said Funaiole. “I don’t think this is necessarily intentional, but as a result of limited resources.”

Washington’s absence has left Beijing space to identify opportunities to strengthen its influence in the region, says Funaiole. As an economic powerhouse, China is a provider of major financing and investment that helps to further expand its reach around the world, which is core to President Xi’s foreign policy strategy.

“For many countries, China and the U.S. are two of their most significant trading partners,” added Funaiole. “It’s in their benefit to have a healthy relationship with both Washington and Beijing. The U.S. needs to learn how to manage this changing environment.”

When it comes to countries moving closer to China, “the U.S. should approach them more carefully and engage with them at different levels in order to earn back its influence in the region,” according to Muhammad Murad, a journalist and Ph.D. candidate in geopolitics at the University of Bonn, Germany. “For this, the U.S. needs to stop repeating the debt trap narrative vis-à-vis China’s Belt and Road Initiative and engage with the region trilaterally, without alienating China in the region.”

Latin American countries are also learning how to deal with the new dynamics of China’s presence in the region. And the issue of illegal fishing in the South Atlantic and Pacific is a potent test of this.

“The issue has not been highlighted so much given the lack of regional cooperation,” said Murad. For example, “despite joint statements by the governments of Chile, Peru and Ecuador against illegal fishing, they seem to tread carefully as the statements don’t name any particular country, opting for phrases such as ‘foreign-flagged vessels’ instead.”

South American countries with maritime grievances, such as Argentina, are looking to navigate these choppy political waters by steering away from direct conflict with China as they manage their ever-increasing relationship with the world's second largest economy.

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Categories / Criminal, Environment, International, Law

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