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China Dominates 44% of Visible Fishing Activity Worldwide

(oceana.org)
144 points scubakid | 4 comments | 29 Jun 25 21:43 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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maxglute ◴[30 Jun 25 01:56 UTC] No.44418442[source]▶
Another year another DC China IUU "the worst" propaganda piece, except this time more stupid - already inflated esimate of PRC DWF fleet last year was 18000... now 32000 kek. It's hilarious to see PRC DWF inflation from 3000 in 2020 to 6000 to 18000 and now 32000 in 5 years. PRC ship building is incredible, but damn /s. PRC wild catch was like 12m in 2020... and 15m in 2024... but somehow catching that extra 3m required DWF to grow from 3000 to 32000. 950% / 29000 new boats to DWF fleet to catch... 25% / 3m tons more fish in 5 years. Truely lie flat behaviour from PRC fishermen. First, something like 70-80% of PRC fish production is via domestic aquaculture.

Can clearly see from empty perimeter in the heat map PRC fishing largely stays clear of SKR, JP EEZ. Reason DC thinktank "report" try to play up 12m hours in SKR is likely that hotspot just south of SKR peninsula, aka disputed Socotra rock EEZ. And I surmise majority of JP 1.5m "hours" are over disputed Senkaku EEZ. 4.5m TW hours, obviously PRC considers TW waters part of her territorial/EEZ waters. About another 1m hours from SCS EEZ disputes. AKA 18/21m hours are basically DC think tank doing customary China bad funny stats from disputed maritime delimitations. Incidentally using said delimitations to extrapolate 3000k PRC distant fishing fleet into 30k+ in 5 years... somehow.

PRC has largest absolute DWF fleet size, but per capita she's underfishing, especially relative to TW, SKR, JP, who're at only 30-50% aquaculture. Spain and Russia also up there. Also fraction of SKR/TW subsidies per capita, about on par with JP. Of course you don't see DC thinktanks hitpieces telling these actors to kill their DWF fishing industries. For PRC's DWF fleet to match other top DWF fleet's capita fishing efforts, she would have to fish something like 3-9x+ more. Unless one thinks PRC fishermen and citizens shouldn't have the same opportunities or access to seafood. Ecuador & Peru, two countries with ~1/30th population of China, together captures about about ~1/2 of China, who also has 1/2 the EEZ of these countries, which incidentally means China has to fish more in international waters.

The only reason PRC IUU fishing got media play / propaganda push in the last few years is US wanted to beef up influence of pacific nations playing up PRC IUU fishing so they can drive the issue to forward deploy coast guard and build influence. It's geopolitical lawfare, and it's unlikely to do anything substantive because any agreement by PRC on curtailing distant fishing would be on per capita basis which would first involve everyone else (JP,SKR,TW etc) to essentially kill their entire DWF industry before PRC would even need to make any cuts.

Again, let's stress how absolutely batshit stupid these new numbers are:

SKR, ~500-700 DWF fleet, 300-400k metric tons per year.

JP ~1200-1500 DWF fleet, 600-900k metric tons per year.

TW ~1000 DWF fleet, 400-600k metric tons per year.

AVG 400-800 tons per ship.

PRC... 32000 DWF fleet, 3000k metric tons per year.

AVG 90 tons per ship.

Or... avg 400-800 tons per ship

PRC ~3750-7500 DWF fleet

PRC official report is like ~2700 in ~2020, add 25% for 25% by 2025 increase catch and you get ~3400. It's underestimation (and while PRC wanted to cap to 3000 in last 5 year plan), but it's underestimate by 100s, not over estimation by 10000s. Like tag on highest maritime militia estimates of ~10k, and it's still almost ~20k over.

E: or just look at estimates of global seafood market growth... ~5% CAGR, ~+50B over past 5 years. Like 35B of that from PRC aquaculture growth. What's the 29000 new DWF doing? Global DWF size for major fishing nations is like 6000... so PRC adds... 500% that and somehow global fishing market grows by... 30%. US thinktank innumeracy.

replies(2): >>44418635 #>>44418938 #
JackYoustra ◴[30 Jun 25 02:27 UTC] No.44418635[source]▶
I mean pollution is bad, regardless of who does it? China is also fairly unique with the brazenness that her (flagged) vessels violate other EEZ waters to fish.
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maxglute ◴[30 Jun 25 02:34 UTC] No.44418684[source]▶
JP/SKR/TW all does it brazenly (i.e. pacific / south american EEZs), SKR/TW also with their share of slave labor. They just don't get reported on, or analysis will include them but MSM that inevitably regurgitates these "analysis" will downplay / leave them out.

And relative to other DWF / wild catch, PRC catches less per capita... so they're poluting less. See approaching 80% agraculture share. PRC basically the most sustainable seafood producer with more than 10m people. Scale it per capita, PRC isn't even in the same level as US partners who don't get the annual smear campaign.

replies(1): >>44419324 #
1. JackYoustra ◴[30 Jun 25 04:19 UTC] No.44419324[source]▶
Sorry - the thing that comes to the front of my mind is trawling all the way in Ecuador, a world over. You’re saying Japan does that as well?
replies(1): >>44419658 #
2. maxglute ◴[30 Jun 25 05:14 UTC] No.44419658[source]▶
AFAIK JP doesn't trawl, they're big on transhipment, i.e. PRC, TW, SKR, Spain does stuff off Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and there's shadiness with moving haul to JP transhipment reefers (big fridge boat) i.e. offload catch so they can fish in region longer, JP basically launders, they're part of the IUU ecosystem. Also trawling all the way over in Ecuador / Peru reports are basically weasle words for saying mostly legimitately fishing in international waterx - the reports will have most DWF ships just outside of EEZ, and small % of which may pop in with AIS drama, because there's always going to be bad apples.

Bad apples usually measured by AIS disabling events... in which case, pre US propaganda drive against PRC I think worst culprits (highest proportion of ships/time) was Spain, something like 15% of activity obscured, then US with high single digits, then TW, slightly higher than PRC, I think 5%. US gets a pass because it's mostly in North West Atlantic aka, US backyard... which well, US just has a big ass EEZ backyard vs PRC has essentially smallest EEZ relative to country size, so PRC _has_ to fish on commons/highseas/international waters (including near countries EEZs where the catch is). Not much info on JP or SKR except SKR is in all the places PRC/TW/SP is in, and have all the shady forced labour issues, so hard to believe they don't also have AIS misbehavior. IIRC some other interesting tidbits is AIS disabling behaviour also sorted by ship type... and the types of ships that have worst/longest AIS disabling are tuna longliner... implicating JP.

But the otherwise TLDR is ever since US thinktanks decided to hammer PRC IUU to the exclusin of everyone else (read US allies/partners), PRC DWF somehow grew 10x and AIS behavior exploded... but even then it's dumb shit like PRC is 80% of fleet off XYZ country EEZ but responsible for 90% of AIS anomolies, i.e. marginally worse.

replies(1): >>44420153 #
3. JackYoustra ◴[30 Jun 25 06:37 UTC] No.44420153[source]▶
Did some looking around and your claims seem correct. I hope we have another UNCLOS convention soon! Too many bad actors, looks like every major distant-fishing power is polluting / overfishing.

I'd quibble with the PRC being the most sustainable producer, there's more to ecology than just fishing vs no fishing, but it's not a major point. And my biggest concern is with absolute scale (44% of the overall fishing effort makes it an outsize impact no matter what! it's kinda like how the US Army ROE matter more than most country army ROE simply because we're engaged more. Hard to address a global problem without focusing on its largest driver.), although, as you probably feel, the solution for that is a new UNCLOS, not singling out the PRC.

replies(1): >>44420484 #
4. maxglute ◴[30 Jun 25 07:33 UTC] No.44420484{3}[source]▶
That's part of Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction discussion at UN, ongoing last few years, very slow going because contested. Will be supplementary to UNCLOS if/once passed. TBH there's no way it WON'T single out PRC because PRC has the most adjacent/close maritime neighbours (entire 1st island chain drama) and smallest EEZ : land area ratio... absurdly disproportionately smaller. Something like 0.1 EEZ per unit of land area. Most big countries with shore access has like 0.5-1.0, US 1.2, SKR 3, Japan lol 12. JP/SKR eats ~60kg of fish per capita, PRC "only" 40kg, which is higher than global average 20kg. But consider 60% / 850m Chinese live about as close to shore as the most inland Japanese/Korean (150km from shore), and they're not going to settle for system that grants them less fish per capita as they get wealthier. Ultimately, that's the geopolitics of it, people who like fish aren't going accept eating less fish than other people who like fish. Probably only fair system I can think of is to limit per capita DWF catch to small % of total fishery/seafood output, i.e. 95% has to be domestic aquaculture (again, PRC already near 80%, others big DWF like 30-50%), but that's going to be biased against countries with less land/lakes etc. Or a per capita cap. Everything else is unworkable even if it means unsustainable extraction, like climate change. Or maybe CCP will take the L... but that will get domestically messy.

IMO wildcatch:aquaculture ratio most sensible/proper incentive for future. Napkin math is if PRC aquaculture goes 80%->95% from 60m to 70m aquaculture, and drops 66% of wild catch from 15m to 5m metric tons. But that also means JP/SKR/TW... basically eliminate their DWF industry by 75-90+%. You'll know US is serious about IUU, not not weaponizing it when US media screams at partners to hit those quotas... well after US ratifies UNCLOS. Regardless, half the world poorer than (3 billion people / 2 Chinas), the less poor they are, the more fish they'll want to eat, and we want to incentivize more aquaculture seafood considering fish has less feed conversion ratio, it's better people eat fish than check/pigs/cattle when they can afford meat. Obviously less/no meat better, but humans will meat.