China’s “physical occupation” of the West Philippine Sea (WPS), whose immense marine resources it is illegally scooping, is reinforcing its unflattering tag as the world’s foremost promoter of illegal fishing.
The communist state maintains a swarming number of maritime militia vessels in the Kalayaan Island Group and WPS, and these ships are engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, while at the same time serving their purpose as coercive tools for Beijing’ expansionist claims.
This week, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) protested the continued presence and the IUU fishing activities of the Chinese paramilitary ships in those Philippine waters as the Duterte administration begins to raise the economic impact and violations associated with those activities.
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional
and Security Policy and Multilateral
Affairs: “This, unfortunately, fits a pattern
that we see from China. From illegal fishing
in the oceans to maritime, to marine
environmental destruction in the South
China Sea, to choking off water flows down
the Mekong River.”
During a forum on the WPS in August this year, the Department of Agriculture (DA), where the BFAR is attached, urged President Duterte to “denounce” Beijing’s IUU fishing in the country’s territory, while pushing for steps to mitigate the effects of the sustained, deliberate and coordinated poaching by the Chinese government.
“To protect West Philippine Sea, we have to stop IUU fishing as well,” said DA Undersecretary Cheryl Marie Natividad-Caballero. “We have asked President Duterte to denounce IUU fishing in the country’s maritime waters.”
World’s No. 1 offender
THE Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime has ranked China, which has the largest distant-water fishing fleet, as the “worst IUU fishing offender” in the world, with the Pew Charitable Trusts ranking Chinese ports as the “most likely to process IUU-caught fish.”
The fleet, subsidized by the Chinese Communist Party, is illegally fishing in the exclusive economic zones of coastal states around the globe, from the Western and Central Pacific, to the coasts of Africa and South America, according to US Department of State Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional and Security Policy and Multilateral Affairs David Feith.
Feith said China’s maritime militia, estimated to number more than 3,000 vessels, actively carry out aggressive behavior on the high seas and in sovereign waters of other countries “to coerce and intimidate legitimate fishers in support of the Chinese Communist Party’s long-term maritime strategic goals.”
“This, unfortunately, fits a pattern that we see from China. From illegal fishing in the oceans to maritime, to marine environmental destruction in the South China Sea, to choking off water flows down the Mekong River,” Feith said during a virtual news briefing with Asian journalists late last year.
“All of these fit a clear pattern of Chinese Communist Party behavior, characterized by bullying, disrespect for international laws and environmental destruction.”
New mode of ‘piracy’
THE Hawaii-based East-West Center (EWC), citing discussions during the recently held Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Exchange conference, said that researchers have suggested, “one in five fish is caught and sold illegally worldwide.”
It said officials have declared that IUU fishing is replacing piracy as the world’s top maritime security threat, partly because “low levels of enforcement provides an entry point for maritime crime such as arms smuggling, drug running and human trafficking.”
Economically and environmentally, IUU fishing—which includes fishing without a license, failing to report catches, keeping fish that are protected by maritime regulations, fishing in closed areas and unauthorized transshipment of fish—threatens the world’s ocean ecosystems and places law-abiding fishers at a disadvantage.
During the conference, officials declared that 25 million tons of fish worth $23.5 billion are estimated being lost globally to IUU every year.
Other than its economic impact, the EWC said, “weak enforcement against IUU fishing can potentially result in national security breaches.”
US Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Karl Schultz agreed with the declaration during a virtual news briefing held three months ago wherein illegal fishing, he said, has already turned into a national security concern.
“For us, the Coast Guard, we see IUU fishing as really a global threat. Fish is an essential protein source for about 40 percent of the global population. And if you look across all of the fish stocks, about 93 percent are really showing signs of depletion. They’re over-fished,” Schultz said.
“So this is a burgeoning problem set…it’s ecological, it’s food sustainment, it’s really national security,” he added.
A description that befits
THE evil that is the IUU and its negative side befits China’s description in the WPS where Beijing is considered as a national security threat, an economic bane and an ecological destroyer by the Philippines.
While its waters have been a great source of pelagic fish, especially tuna, cod and mackerel, fish catch and maritime harvests in the WPS have been cornered by Chinese vessels that take this bounty from the sea to Beijing.
Chinese paramilitary forces masquerading as fishermen also wantonly harvest endangered giant clams, locally known as taklobo, and ship them back home.
Caballero said the country is not only dealing with IUU and its effects in the WPS, but even the environmental degradation brought by China and its activities in the territory.
“From 350 hectares in 2015, it is already 1,850 hectares in 2020,” the DA undersecretary said, referring to the artificial man-made islands that China built in the area where reefs and corals are damaged and destroyed.
She said that the Philippines sustains an almost unquantifiable ecological damage annually out of the Chinese government’s “rape” of Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal and Kalayaan Island Group.
Image courtesy of CLAFFRA | DREAMSTIME.COM