In the report they warn that these fishing vessels turned off their location systems when they were outside the international permitted zone
For iProfessional
01/12/2023 – 9:02 p.m.
The NGO Oceana released a report on illegal fishing in the Argentine Sea in which it denounces Chinese fishing boats that turned off tracking systems for more than 600 thousand hours to operate illegally in Argentine waters.
This happened between 2018 and 2021, years in which Several of the Chinese ships that were operating outside the Exclusive Economic Zone (ZEE) of Argentina turned off their location systems and remained more than 600,000 hours without being able to be located. The NGO managed to detect these irregularities through a ship tracking system.
Mostly, these fleets are dedicated to catching toothy squida species that is key to the country’s economy, since it is the food of numerous species, such as tuna and swordfish.
How Illegal Fishing Was Caught From Chinese Boats
These irregularities were detected through a device called the Automatic Identification System (AIS), provided by Global Fishing Watch (GFW), an independent non-profit firm founded by Oceana, in partnership with Google. and SkyTruth.
The system allows to know in real time information such as the name of the vessel, the state of the flag and the location.
Through the information detected by this device, it was possible to know that more than 800 foreign vessels completed more than 900,000 total hours of apparent fishing.
For the most part, these fleets are dedicated to catching toothy squid
Between January 1, 2018 and April 25, 2021, these vessels were at the limit of the Exclusive Economic Zone. 69% of this fishing activity was carried out by 433 Chinese vessels while 145 Argentine-flagged vessels carried out 9,269 hours of work in that place.
In turn, the NGO detected more than 6,000 events that occurred at different times, in which the location of these vessels could not be detected for more than 24 hours, which could mean that they deactivated their public monitoring system.
From this it follows that the fishing boats, 66% of Chinese origin, “were invisible for more than 600,000 hours in total”hiding their location and “masking potentially illegal behavior, such as crossing into Argentina’s national waters to fish,” Oceana said in a statement.
Illegal squid fishing
In the document released by the NGO, they specified that “Argentine waters have a tremendous abundance and diversity of marine life, including more than 330 types of fish, almost 120 of them from deep waters, and a variety of invertebrates.”
“Commercial fishermen target between 60 and 70 of these species, including the Argentine squid (Illex argentinus), which makes up the second largest squid fishery in the world.“, they detailed in the report.
According to the organization, the world squid fishery represents a commercial value of almost 4 billion dollars, according to figures from 2016, and the variety of toothy squid came to generate, in South America, profits of around 2,400 million dollars.
