China's IUU Fishing is Testing Global Fishing Governance

On August 16th, China's summer fishing moratorium ended in the South China Sea. According to the government, enforcement of the moratorium was their toughest in history - seizing 1,691 illegal fishing vessels and handling 1,768 violation cases. The country's marine law enforcement corps enforcement credited new approaches utilized new technology such as satellite imagery and big data management to the agency's success. [1]

Outside of the South China Sea, there is a clear difference in Chinese marine law enforcement. Stories of China's 'dark fleet' emerged across the globe - hundreds of fishing vessels without monitoring equipment thousands of miles away from their home country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). For North Korea, the Galapagos Islands, and Argentina, China's distant-water fishing fleet was illegally fishing through large-scale and intensive means - severely affecting the local marine ecosystem and the livelihoods of local fisherman. [2] China's distant-water fishing fleet, estimated to have more than ten-thousand ships, is a shock to the global fishing system. [3]

Overseas, the Chinese government is absent in handling its fishermen.

Countries have been forced to handle Chinese fleets on their own accord. Responses have varied from acceptance to condemnation to violence against violating ships. [2] Individual state responses are inefficient towards managing what is becoming a global problem. The global fishing governance system which exists to regulate such behavior has been powerless, leaving Chinese ships pushed out of foreign economic exclusive zones to easily move to different waters to continue the same pattern of illegal fishing. [4]

In 2020, several reports shined a light on the extent of China's illegal fishing practicing.

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime published a new index ranking China as the most vulnerable to IUU fishing. The country scored the worst on a number of categories - for instance, the number of compliance issues with flagging, portage, and illegal fishing as well as the lack of compliance measures for local inspections. [5]

One report in the ScienceAdvances journal, Illuminating dark fishing fleets in North Korea, tracked the number of Chinese illegal fishing vessels in North Korean waters through new technical methods combining satellites technologies. The researchers approximated the fleet caught 164,000 metric tons of Japanese flying squid worth over $440 million in 2017 and 2018 - equalling the total catches of Japan and South Korea combined. The impact is undeniable as reported catches of the squid in neighboring countries had dropped by ~80%. Less obvious, a large influx of North Korean illegal fishing in Russia is a likely consequence, as these small-scale traditional fishers shifted their efforts north to avoid competition from Chinese fishermen. [6]

On the opposite side of the Pacific, Ecuador reported 149 vessels of a larger fleet just outside of the EEZ of the Galapagos Islands turned off their satellite systems. These ships were outside the jurisdiction of the Ecuadorian Navy and the New Zealand-based South Pacific RFMO was unresponsive to the public throughout this incident. [7]

Op-ed writers and policy analysts have scrutinized the activities of China's dark fleet dominantly through the lens of national security. Chinese fishermen reach local headlines only after entering domestic territory, causing damage to maritime ecosystems and stealing economic opportunities from local fishermen. Australia, for instance, does not care about the illegal fishing boats near Palau, but they did once the fleet moved towards their waters.

While this perspective is the obvious one because we see China's illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing as a problem through its harms, this paradigm is outdated and flawed towards policymaking though because it is (1) shallow and (2) reactive.

IUU fishing has existed since humans laid claim over Earth and its resources. [8] In the past, viewing IUU fishing as a sovereign issue was feasible given they were often born from one-off incidents or border disputes. The perspective is outdated today because IUU fishing has evolved as a problem. It has never been so driven by a single apparatus with technology enabling it to reach anywhere around the entire world in a short period of time. [9] This is likely a trend that will not be isolated to one single country as well.

At the same time, the lens of national security means analyzing events through the lens of harms to humans, which is inherently flawed for finding solutions for IUU fishing. IUU fishing is a concept that exists through our relationship with the environment. China's distant-water fishing fleet does not directly inflict harm upon others but instead harms through removing the opportunity for others to extract resources from the same environment. [9] It inflicts harm to our international system through its harms to our shared oceans. [10]

This fact is missing in the discourse today which sees the threat of China's IUU fishing from region to region, country to country, and boat to boat. Instead, viewing China as one actor within IUU fishing and looking at IUU fishing as an environmental problem, means understanding that overfishing in any one part of the ocean is a problem for all countries. This perspective also shows that IUU fishing leads to a feedback loop which leads to more IUU fishing that today's governance regime is poorly equipped to face.

According to the UN, Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU Fishing) can broadly be defined as (1) fishing in violation of national laws or international obligations, (2) fishing that is not reported or misreported, and (3) fishing in areas to which there are no applicable conservation or management measures. [11] IUU fishing is a fairly new issue brought to the UN; the international framework to address fisheries management stated with the adoption of UNCLOS in 1982. Since then, 8 additional agreements and instruments have been adopted. [12] The issue has been brought to the main table through its inclusion in the SDGs under SDG 14 - Life below water. SDG 14.4 and 14.6 address IUU fishing and fishing subsidies. [13]

The threat of IUU fishing is directly linked to the harms of overfishing. It undermines efforts to conserve and manage fish stocks by avoiding national and regional fisheries management organizations (RFMO) tasked with enabling sustainable fishing yields. Sustainable fishing as a practice means limiting catching so that fish stocks can be replenished entirely every year. It is often done through catch quotas which fishery management organizations are tasked with enforcing. IUU fishing can lead to annual catches volumes that surpass the quota while also obfuscating catch data for RFMOs, leading to poor policymaking. With small IUU fishing, impacts are limited to short-term economic effects. Intense IUU fishing, like in the case of China's distant-water fleet, can collapse fisheries and impair efforts to recover systems where stocks have already been depleted. [14] In 2019, The UN reported that over 90% of the world fish stocks were either exploited, overexploited, or depleted. [15]

The motivation for engaging IUU fishing is primarily economic. Fishermen are able to extract greater short-term profits by selling fish which they would not be able to catch under the legal system. [16] Fishermen engaged in long-term IUU fishing can significantly affect the socioeconomic structures within a country depending on how much the fishing industry relies on IUU fishing and its organizational structure. [17] Large investments in advanced fishing vessels create sunk costs for the industry to continue engaging in the activity. [18] When local fishing stocks become depleted, societies dependent on the fishing economy cannot just choose to break down their industries. [19] Socioeconomic pressures lead to fishermen taking on bigger risks; stressing local fishing stocks more or move towards other fishing stocks, which may or may not belong to other countries. [6] External intervention is critical in these circumstances.

Overfishing affects the environment not just by depleting a fishing stock, it transforms ecosystems. The ecological system is unbalanced through competition changes from the depletion of certain fish species. This is known as a trophic cascade. [16] For instance, in the 1980s and 1990s, with the removal of the Atlantic Cod, the number of smaller fish increased, decreasing the number of zooplankton and increasing the amount of phytoplankton. [20] The risk of a trophic cascade is not limited to catching predators. Removal of herbivorous fishes from coral reefs, algae can increase and damage coral reef systems, which play a crucial part in the overall ocean ecosystem. [21] Though much of China's distant-water fleet is involves squid-fishing, which carries a smaller ecological risk. The ships in the fleet that do engage in non-squid fishing, such as those in West Africa, utilize equipment that risk by-catches, such as nets or trawls. [17] Some of these ships also target protected species. One ship near the Galapagos had been caught with 6000 sharks in 2019. [22]

China is the world's top fishing country and has been for many years. In 2015, the country reported 17.6 million tons of fish produced from capture - 1 million of which is accounted for by the distant-water fleet. The industry is supported by the world's largest fishing fleet in the world, with ~200,000 marine vessels and between 2,500 and 18,000 distant-water vessels. In total, fishery production accounts for around one-third of global production and live fish captures accounted for 17% of the global total. [3] [17]

By 2013, the country's fishery industry has undergone rapid development with the support of the government. [23] For the governments of provinces where most fishermen are based, such as Hainan, Zhejiang, and Shandong, fishing provides tremendous economic benefits from employment to export revenues. [24] The industry's value had grown 850x from 1979 to 2013, from RMB 2 billion to RMB 1.9 trillion. The total workforce in the fishing industry amounts to 14.43 million people. [17] A rough estimate of the workforce related to the distant-water fleet is ~819 thousand people (using the proportion of the catch of the distant-water fleet to the total). These workers net an average of RMB 13,000 annually, roughly $2000. It attracts migrant workers from China's rural inland provinces. The total export value of the fishing industry was $20 billion. [17]

The phenomenon of China's distant-water fishing fleet is rather new. The increase has largely been in response to the depletion of local fishing stocks and in connection to policy objectives of ensuring food security and developing the fishing industry for socioeconomic reasons. One of the government's key approaches towards addressing food security is through the "blue granary" or a marine-based approach. The industry supports a substantial amount of employment for traditionally less-developed coastal regions and provides export revenue to offset the country's large agriculture-related trade deficit. Prior to the 1990s, China's distant-water fleet was nearly non-existent. Depleting fishery resources due to overfishing and pollution in the East China Sea area in addition to fishing fuel subsidies motivated fishermen to move their activities towards the South China Sea. Fuel subsidies were calculated on the basis of engine power, motivating fishermen towards building bigger and more powerful vessels. An additional fishing fuel subsidy, called the Spratly Islands Special Fuel Subsidy, provides additional funds to fishermen to go beyond the country's EEZ. Today, almost all of China's traditional fishing grounds are depleted. For the Chinese government, the distant-water fleet is a means to mitigate overfishing and protect marine ecology on inshore waters. [17]

In 2013, Xi Jinping pushed Chinese fishermen in the Tanmen fishing town to “build bigger ships and venture even further into the oceans and catch bigger fish." Since then, stories of Chinese distant-water fleet have appeared around the world. Promoting distant water fishing is aimed at sustaining domestic demand for fishery products and to provide work for fishermen. The size of the distant-water fleet is celebrated as a policy success story and an example of an approach to alleviate China’s domestic resource shortages. Additionally, the sector has grown large enough to influence China's domestic political-economy towards furthering developing the distant-water fishing fleet. Policymakers and scholars in the province of Qingdao, the leading processor and exporter, are the key force behind the “Blue Granary” concept; the China National Agricultural Development Group also perpetuates the food security narrative to gain more financial support from the government for their expansion. [17]

Most responses to date to Chinese IUU fishing in foreign EEZs has been on a nation-to-nation basis. The map above provides showcases news stories of Chinese IUU fishing in different areas of the world. Notably, these responses have been reactive only after extensive IUU fishing has taken place. This has been ineffective for many countries, as prior to the coast guard is deployed, diplomatic measures must take place, which are time-consuming and sometimes leave no response from the Chinese government's side. In the case of the 300-ship fleet near the EEZ of the Galapagos Islands, the Chinese embassy in Quito, Ecuador said in a July 23 statement that China respects Ecuador’s measures to protect the environment and preserve marine resources. [37] It was until mid-September that the vessels left the area, weeks after the country implemented a 3-month fishing moratorium off the Galapagos. [38] Data from NGOs showed several ships entered the EEZ and engaged in IUU fishing during this time. [25] Other countries are not as patient as Ecuador and resort to military action to deal with Chinese ships in their EEZ. In 2016, Argentina sank a Chinese fishing vessel, and in 2019, the country's coast guard opened fire at another Chinese fishing vessel inside the country's territorial waters. [39] [40] Similarly, South Korea expelled a total of 7,196 fishing vessels in October 2020 and has resumed seizure operations towards any violators. [41] States however are powerless to take action against vessels that sit outside of their EEZs, similar to the case of Ecuador. This is nonsensical when considering that fish do not conceptualize borders and pass through these waters to be caught by China's distant-water fleet.

Much of China’s distant-water fleet is in the high seas. In 2017, the fleet caught 66 percent of its catch from the high seas. [24] Chinese IUU fishing in the high seas is less reported upon because of a lack of governance in some parts and a lack of monitoring in those areas that are governed. Fishing in the high seas is governed by RFMOs or regional fishing management organizations. [42] The high seas are covered by a patchwork of RFMOs with some areas ungoverned. Any bottom trawl fishing on the high seas in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Central Atlantic, and Southwest Atlantic Ocean is not covered by a regional management organization. These organizations rely on self-reporting and observers onboard to monitor fishing activity. [43] Many of China's distant-water fleet neither report their catches to these organizations nor carry an observer. Observers bear great risk onboard these ships and, in 2020, two have gone missing while aboard Chinese ships [44]. NGOs have played a critical role in filling the gap of monitoring, as shown in the case of the Galapagos Islands and North Korea. [25] RFMOs have no strength in enforcement and rely on the national coast guards of states to push vessels engaged in IUU fishing off the high seas or the home country to penalize those engaged. [45] The US plays a major part in the role currently which it is looking to expand. [46]

Worryingly, the lack of enforcement from RFMOs and limited capacity for nations to mobilize their military ships to the high seas has left a clear gap. The US has stated it would deploy coast guard ships in the western Pacific for security missions with one objective being to fight illegal fishing from China. [47] For most of the world, this reads as part of the greater US-China tension rather than the real threat from IUU fishing. [48] Simultaneously, Interpol's experience with the Bandit 6 shows that targeted international policing of illegal fishing can be time-consuming. [44] Both approaches are unsustainable given the costs of managing the international system burdened on one single state and lack of overall governance infrastructure.

China's history shows that domestic overfishing can turn into an international problem. It shows the linkages to environmental problems with socioeconomic systems and the connectedness of the ocean. Today's problem demonstrates the gaps in global governance, as well as that countermeasures from individual nations are not enough to solve a global problem. Additionally, institutions have never faced an actor of such magnitude in the past and as such never designed to do so. Solution finding should be built around these ideas.

First, more investment towards technology to assist in monitoring for compliance purposes should be implemented. SkyTruth and the Global Fishing Watch have shown how satellite technologies can be utilized to detect IUU fishing, however, these methods are still reactive rather than proactive. Technologies such as drones or buoys can be utilized for more rapid response and to deter IUU fishing. [50] [51] Implementation can be similar to the Green Climate Fund, which invests in projects with low financial returns but high social returns related to cleaner infrastructure projects.

Second, RFMOs should be strengthened and more cooperation should occur between national fishery management organizations. For many parts of the world, China's distant-water fleet exploits regional areas that affect many local fishery industries. These countries are often poor and could benefit from pooling resources into a shared policy towards countering foreign fishing vessels. [52]

Third, international systems should demonstrate economic penalties to produce costs to counterbalance the short-term benefits of IUU fishing. Such penalties are rare, but exist in some cases, while the shared oceans are being exploited for the benefit of single actors everyday. [53] Most RFMOs do not have this power. [54] This is likely the most difficult to implement in the same way that carbon emissions have yet to be taxed. However, the value of fishing stocks is much clearer than climate change. [55]

Fourth, the WTO case for fishing subsidies should be ruled against China. Regardless of China's status as a developing country, their role in high seas fishing is undebatable and their capacity to be responsible should adjust as well. China will not change their behavior unless international pressure forces them to. China has the domestic capacity to regulate its territorial waters. It should understand the measures necessary to control its distant-water fleet before implementing. [1]

Finally, discourse on IUU fishing should focus on the long-term environmental harms rather than the short-term economic costs. The linkages to overfishing risks the same socioeconomic pressures to take shape for other nations' fishing industries to engage in riskier behavior. Chinese IUU fishing unchecked can lead to depleted fishing stocks abroad, leading other fishermen, like in the case of North Korea, to also engage in IUU fishing, risking for the problem to spiral out of control. [6]

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