Source: Radio Australia
Researchers have found that Chinese fishing vessels are taking a huge global catch that is going unreported.
China reports to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization that it catches an average of 368,000 tons each year.
But scientists from Canada have found the haul could be as much as 4.6 million tons.
Most fish come from African waters but a significant portion come from the Pacific where there are huge tuna stocks.
Presenter: Campbell Cooney
Speaker: Daniel Pauly, University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre
Pauly: Our method, the method we used doesn’t allow differentiating between legal and illegal catch. That's the whole point about the Chinese, who do not make available the agreement under which they operate in countries, even when they fish legally. So we inferred their presence from newspapers, articles, web sites and other indirect information and then we assessed what number of vessels was likely to occur, given the reports that we had, and then we multiplied these numbers of vessel by the catch of a typical vessel of that kind. And the catches of tuna vessels are smaller than the catch of trawlers that are deployed mainly off Africa.
And so we got 300 vessels about, catching about three million tons in Africa, and 600 vessels in different parts of the world, including in the Pacific catching the rest.
Cooney: Where is this fish ending up? Is this to supply China’s own domestic market?
We assessed that about one third of the catch is landed locally, especially in Africa. One third of the catch is distributed in the international markets, Europe, North America, East Asia, outside of China and one third goes back to China.
You’ve made the point there, it’s hard to differentiate between legal catch and illegal catches. Are they perhaps taking advantage of at times the huge diplomatic and aid donor sort of power that they can have to try and get their influence going and to get their boats...?
Exactly, but they don’t differ from say the European countries. They barge themselves; they push themselves into the countries and offer different things.
I heard just that China was building up a shopping mall, a convention centre. In Africa, they do that, they build sports stadium or roads, or railways or something and this contrasts with the European Access Agreement which offer cash that is used mainly to support the budget of the various countries.
It would be a lot of countries are like turning certainly to the Pacific. The resources that they have is often the fisheries, the oceans, and that there. It’s one of the few sources they have to actually get some sort of income by leasing that out there. It’s as you mentioned there, it’s very hard for a lot of these countries to say no to them?
The only way for the country to get a better deal is to get together and team up and offer a close front, and that is beginning to happen in the Pacific and it’s not happening in Africa and so the condition now is a bit better in the Pacific.
What’s the suggestion or recommendation. Have you come up with that to way, to sort of get this...?
We want is transparency, is pushing China to be more forthcoming with reasonable statistics. It cannot go on that China has absurd statistics, very high in their fishery domestically, and very low in other countries. This is not realistic.
In fact last year, a high Chinese official has admitted to one million ton being caught outside of China and this is much higher, three or four times higher than they had up to now admitted. And this is a realistic value if you consider what they import probably from other countries, from the fishery abroad. We estimate that one third, that is one-and-a-half million tons. He admitted one million ton.
But that is contradictory, because the statistics that they give to FAO don't have these numbers.
You mentioned more oversight and more pressure internally. But what about international organizations, is it possible that they can bring some pressure to play here?
Yes, but this will be soft, because the international organization, for example, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations are what the countries allow them, member countries allow them to be and so they have to tread carefully headquarters.
Alright.
You see what I mean?
I do know what you mean.
The regional organization always international organization always are strong or as the country allow them to be. That is the problem with the international arrangement, that we don’t have super national authorities.