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The Chinese have flotillas of hundreds of illegal fishing boats that travel across the globe to devastate local fish populations. They recently illegally entere
by ordinaryradical 6y ago
The Chinese have flotillas of hundreds of illegal fishing boats that travel across the globe to devastate local fish populations. They recently illegally entered the area surrounding the Galapagos to terrible effect.[1] So as sensible as this concept is, it needs enforcement, and at this point I’m not sure what, shy of direct violence, will get this to stop.
[1] https://phys.org/news/2020-10-crisis-galapagos-chinese-fishing-fleets.html https://phys.org/news/2020-10-crisis-galapagos-chinese-fishi...
- hashtagmarkup 6y agoIndirect violence might work... like, if we could genetically engineer a highly infectious virus that mutates RNA and destroys lung tissue, then deploy it somewhere in china? That would probably work. What are the odds a Chinese fishmonger would ever come in contact with an American?
- PicassoCTs 6y agoActual violence is not a solution. What is need is anti-fishing equipment mines, that destroy nets brought into a protected area. A solar powered drone-sub with a "gnaw"-wire-saw near the towing cables should do. Fishing is a dying "industry" as is old school electricity- every time fishing goes into decline, fish-farms grow. Interesting Trivia by the way: Fish farming is one of the cheapest ways to generate protein besides insects. Fish living in a weightless environ and requiring very little body heat, help to that.
- botwriter 6y agoGhost nets are some of the most ecologically destructive things on the planet. creating more of them isn't a smart move.
- PicassoCTs 6y agoSo the drone rolls them into a ball and carries them to the surface?
- steve_adams_86 6y agoI think you’re underestimating how massive fishing equipment is and how energy intensive that would be
- soulofmischief 6y agoAll State authority is backed by violence. If you wish to enforce an international decree, be prepared to use violence when an entity decides they are above the law at the expense of the planet or greater society.
- beamatronic 6y agoYou could even say that they are stealing these fish, which is a violent act in and of itself. So the “violence” has already started.
- darkerside 6y agoAnd they could say that claiming ownership and control over a natural resource constitutes an invasion of shared space, and this, violence
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> You could even say that they are stealing these fish, which is a violent act in and of itself. You could say that, but it would mostly serve to convince people not to listen to you.
- bigwavedave 6y agoIf S.H.I.E.L.D. waltzes into Wakanda and steals a ton of vibranium from their mines, is that not an act of theft/violence? Or is plundering another nation's resources not considered violence?
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> is that not an act of theft/violence? Well, I can see where your conceptual problem lies. Theft is taking something that isn't yours. Violence is use of force. They are orthogonal concerns. Whether your theft of something involved an act of violence depends on how you stole it.
- riffraff 6y agoaren't fish farms fed with other sea catch?
- olejorgenb 6y agoYes, but the plant-based content has increased alot in later years. 75% of the feed is plant based according to https://thefishsite.com/articles/whats-salmon-feed-really-made-of https://thefishsite.com/articles/whats-salmon-feed-really-ma...
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- oh_sigh 6y agoWhy is actual violence not a solution? How many fishing ships would need to be sunk by the Chilean Navy before they wouldn't enter their territorial waters?
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- ksdale 6y agoHow many fishing ships would need to be sunk before the Chinese navy shows up in Chilean waters?
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- remote_phone 6y agoThe Chinese navy would be at a compete disadvantage being so far away from friendly allies. Let them come.
- patmorgan23 6y agoAnd then china is at war with all of NATO
- virmundi 6y agoDoes China have a useful blue water navy? Besides South America could organize and easily defeat the Chinese ships.
- pjc50 6y agoProperty damage does also count as violence, and at sea will be met with violence; illegal boats will start mounting guns.
- pvaldes 6y ago> illegal boats will start mounting guns. This happens since decades near California Gulf in fact.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoThis may be a dopey question, but my understanding was that gun ownership basically didn't exist in China. The one instance of going shooting in China of which I've heard involved going to a special range in a major city in which rifles were chained to the table at the firing line. How do boats get away with this?
- yorwba 6y agoIf they're fishing in the Gulf of California, they might be able to get guns from some Mexican cartel, but they'd better not try to get them back to China. Though I'm not sure whether that's really happening, since a search for "chinese fishing boats fired" https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chinese+fishing+boats+fired https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chinese+fishing+boats+fired exclusively returns results where coast guards of other nations fired at Chinese boats. If Chinese boats had guns, you'd think they'd use them and we'd get to hear about it.
- pvaldes 6y agohttps://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/feb/10/shots-fired-boat-trying-save-endangered-vaquita-se/ https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/feb/10/shots-fired-boat-tryin... And incendiary weapons also: https://apnews.com/article/db582591f91d4747abc0fefc520257af https://apnews.com/article/db582591f91d4747abc0fefc520257af
- wnoise 6y agoChinese fishing boats that are illegally harvesting in other countries' maritime regions spend a great deal of time outside Chinese territory, where Chinese law is not enforced. And that's ignoring the possibility of collaborating with the Chinese state. Not that this is happening, but I don't see any large barriers to it.
- baxtr 6y agoSo mines that explode are non violent?
- tuatoru 6y agoA simpler method would be satellite observation[1] coupled with a universal "you catch it, you land it" rule - no more throwing by-catch back into the sea. 1. Thank you Elon, for making this feasible.
- redis_mlc 6y ago> Actual violence is not a solution. Stupid people say stupid things. Countries have navies to enforce their fishery zones, and navies work. Indonesia has sunk hundreds of Chinese fishing boats, and other nations will increasingly do the same, now that the true nature of the CCP has been exposed.
- blargmaster42_8 6y agoPro chicom Biden will fix it
- pjc50 6y agoNot unprecedented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars
- LolWolf 6y agoThis is a phenomenal article! Thanks for the link! (I had never heard of the “Cod wars” until now but they are fascinating...)
- pjc50 6y agoFish are a resource to be colonized at gunpoint like anything else. It's just that this (fortunately) produced a set of ludicrous little skirmishes rather than the Royal Navy turning up and shelling Reykjavík.
- LolWolf 6y agoOh, no, absolutely; it is just quite surprising to me that these were relatively modern events. (It’s also a fun case study where negotiations failed spectacularly, with interesting/unexpectedly underlying causes.)
- ashtonkem 6y agoSome say that the golden age of naval idiocy has gone away forever, fortunately these people are wrong.
- an_opabinia 6y agoExcept absolutely nothing in the world would be lost, in reality, no aspect of human existence, no reduction of joy, if people fished less and fish was more expensive, or whatever crap, in retrospect, people were collecting into their bellies or as stupid fashion for history.
- kgwgk 6y agoMore recently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbot_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbot_War
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- throwawaysea 6y agoIt’s way more than hundreds. China has has hundreds illegally off of just Galapagos, and laughably claimed they were all operating legally. This article on that incident says China has 17000 “distant fishing” boats. Maybe not all are in economic exclusive zones but I bet most operate in ways that would be illegal under US law: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/260-chinese-boats-fish-galapagos-ecuador-alert-72086030 https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/260-chinese-b... All avenues that aren’t violent have not worked and the UN or the international court system are too slow to respond effectively. YouTube already has many videos of military ships shooting at Chinese fishing vessels. That seems like the most expedient solution.
- beamatronic 6y ago17,000 boats. Burning fossil fuels also. Do they use bunker fuel, diesel fuel, or both?
- throwawaysea 6y agoThey most likely use diesel fuel, given that most are probably relatively smaller vessels. But some ships are “factory ships”, with onboard processing, and those would likely be large enough to hold engines that can take bunker fuel.
- petertodd 6y agoNote that bunker fuel is likely to be a bit more environmentally friendly from a long-term climate change point of view, as being less refined, less energy is used in processing it. The pollutants from it aren't a concern when far out at sea, as they're only a threat to local air quality. They're just a concern closer to shores.
- beamatronic 6y agoWhat I’m getting at is that these distant voyages are only economically possible at a certain fuel cost. If the fuel cost goes too high, these distance voyages are no longer feasible.
- undersuit 6y agoIf we can't/won't/shouldn't stop the Chinese then we need to stop our fishing, and never buy any Chinese fish. Much easier to enforce ourselves.
- fvv 6y agoChina could anyway consume internally all the fish .. things meat be regulated and rules respected there should be a global entity that regulate that
- undersuit 6y agoYou bring up a good point, they could consume all the fish. But if we can't regulate them, WE will consume all the fish. We don't need to consume all the fish.
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- echelon 6y agoWe need to stop doing business with China period. They're going to leapfrog our knowledge industries, leading to total economic stagnation of the West. We shouldn't do business with a country that steals, doesn't play fair, is the embodiment of 1984, and above all, commits genocide. Get the G7 countries, Korea, India, etc. on board with the plan. Start doing manufacturing in India, Vietnam, Africa, and Mexico. Copy their Belt initiative, but make the countries that do business with us allies rather than devastatingly indebted. Agree in unison to cancel Chinese debts owed as repayment for technologies stolen. Defend the South China Sea for energy exploration by other neighboring countries. Defend Vietnam's water rights. Strengthen alliance with Vietnam, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. In the extreme case, offer recognition of independence to Taiwan or even US statehood. Brain drain China. Offer immigration packages and economic incentives to Chinese PhD students. We have to be proactive about the situation. Xi has played the CCP's hand early, and we have a chance to nip their ambitions in the bud. Before anyone accuses me of racism, I care deeply about the Chinese people. I also acknowledge the problems of the West - racial injustice, inequality, ongoing wars. But compared to democracy, as flawed as it is, I think the future posed by Communist China is nightmare fuel and has the potential to eclipse the future we are trying to build.
- jimmaswell 6y agoIllegal foreign fishing within a country's maritime borders should be deterred by its navy.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoWhich is a great theory, but if you're a small island being stared down by Red China, are you really going to take her on over fish?
- wwweston 6y agoYou might make treaties with larger nations who could use various other negotiation methods (or, failing that, navies) to try and reach a global balance.
- m0zg 6y agoWhy would a "larger nation" such as China agree to such a treaty when they can blow you out of their waters, and you can't blow them out of yours? What's in it for them? It's not in their interest, so a treaty is a non-starter.
- patmorgan23 6y agoIt would probably be a different larger nation that's geopolitically opposed to China.
- dirtyid 6y ago>hundreds of illegal Citation needed. Basically all of these articles tries to spin Chinese distance fishing fleets operating largely in international waters, at the edge of respective country EEZs, legally as... illegal. This article specifically: >nothing blatantly illegal to report to the Ecuadorian navy, the Coast Guard was relegated to watching, There is nothing to stop enforcement of isolated illegal behaviour, which actual analysis of transponder behaviour shows, is limited to handful of boats and such behaviour is consistent among other distant fishing fleet. CCP doesn't give a shit when other countries enforce on Chinese distant fishing vessels unless behavior overlaps with disputed maritime areas. Plenty of Chinese ships detained or even sunk by foreign coast guards, central government just shrugs and say tough shit. Though it's a sufficiently annoying diplomatic issue that China is trying to reduce it's DWF size in the next few years. > devastate local fish populations At the end of the day, China _UNDER_ fishes per capita, including the Galapagos drama. Ecuador & Peru, two countries with 1/28th population of China, captures about about 1/4 of China, who also has 1/2 the EEZ of these countries, which incidentally means China has to fish more in international waters. In fact Ecuador & Peru catches as much fish annually as US with 1/10 the population... so if anything these two countries need to fish less and China needs to fish more. BTW top 5 DWF fleets by size: China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Spain. Adjusted per capita China would rank behind Taiwan, Korea. In terms of transshipped fishing (offloading catch to support vessels) which allows fishing fleets to fish longer with less traceability, China ranks behind South Korea, Japan, Taiwan.
- quattrofan 6y agoReally is time to do something about the Chinese emptying the oceans. We need some subs around the Galapagos to help them and sink those Chinese vessels if needed.
- vaccinator 6y agoit will stop when all fish are gone
- magicsmoke 6y agoThe whole focus on Chinese fishing in foreign EEZs is a red herring (excuse the pun) compared to the real goal behind subsidizing a large deep water fishing fleet. http://cimsec.org/evolution-of-the-fleet-a-closer-look-at-the-chinese-fishing-vessels-off-the-galapagos/46116 http://cimsec.org/evolution-of-the-fleet-a-closer-look-at-th... Most Chinese fishing takes place right outside the EEZ in the high seas, and after the 2017 fiasco with a Chinese ship caught in the Galapagos EEZ they've been very careful not to actually enter its 200nm limit. The linked article has some great maps of AIS data that clearly show this. There may still be scattered instances of ships with AIS transponders turned off being sent into the EEZ or transfers from non-Chinese flagged vessels to Chinese ships, but according to the article "In most cases, what is detectable may not be illegal, and care is clearly being taken by the Chinese fleet to give the appearance of legal compliance with national and international laws." The real bombshell is this here: "A task force report published in 2010 by Chinese government, industry, and academics argued that countries that have a longer history of using the ocean have more power in determining how resources are distributed and thus receive a larger share of those resources: occupying brings about rights and interests" China is subsidizing a large deep water fleet so they become the largest fishers on the high seas outside of the 200nm EEZs and so can write the future rules for high seas fishing. As stated in the article, of the regional fishery management organizations that operate in the area very few Chinese ships are registered with the IATTC (founded 1949) despite China being a member. Rather, the ships are all registered with the SPRFMO (founded 2012). It's a lot easier to write organization rules when you're a founding member than when you join decades later. In international politics possession (in this case precedence) is 9/10ths of the law and you can be sure in any future negotiations over fishing quotas in the currently loosely regulated high seas China will have the largest voice because they have the largest fleet and largest historical catch. While everyone's still back in the 80s guarding their 200nm UNCLOS EEZs China's already got the first mover advantage on everything outside those EEZs.
- kylebenzle 6y agoHow there are any fish reserves left at all is beyond belief. The fact that the Earth hasn't imploded yet is weird.
- bamboozled 6y agoHow does this compare to something like this super trawler? [1]. I feel like this comment is just circling out what "The Chinese" are doing and neglecting the fact that Europeans are doing similar destructive things. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FV_Margiris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FV_Margiris
- theshrike79 6y agoThat super trawler isn't going to be on other countries sovereign waters with the transponder off. Nor is it going to crash a coast guard vessel on purpose. The crew also won't be killing any coast guard who board the vessel. [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/world/asia/chinese-fisherman-kills-south-korean-coast-guardsman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/world/asia/chinese-fisher...
- bamboozled 6y agoNone of what you said makes it any less destructive.