Bottom trawling in particular seems horrendous. Here is Attenborough narrating about the horrors of it and how it affects the ocean floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXp3jo_uGOQ
One massive problem with data collection on fishing, is that the world is absolutely littered with outright fake AIS data, where the vast majority are registered as Chinese vessels. Anyone can purchase a AIS transmitter, and spoof the data. Some areas are much more affected - especially out in the middle of the pacific ocean, and the Indian sea. Some areas there can have almost 100% spoofed AIS data. So a lot of work goes toward filtering these out.
When working on this kind of analysis, you have a bunch of data sources: AIS, VMS, LRIT, which are either land or satellite borne. Other than these, you have SAR, Optical, NRD (navigation radar detectors), and some other - but with these, you obviously need to have some classification and correlation system. AIS is by far the most common source, and it is also the one that is easiest to manipulate.
Vessels can simply turn off their AIS transponders, while out at sea. And it can easily be spoofed. But a lot of the garbage AIS data is really just that, random garbage. Just some random MMSI attached to a Chinese flag, and a completely random sailing pattern. These are relatively easy to filter out, but often times they share the MMSI with actual vessels - many which are indeed Chinese vessels.
FWIW, China also produces enormous (enormous) quantities of seafood from caged underwater oceanic farms. It's the future of fishing IMHO.
The rich, everywhere in the world, will continue to seek wild-caught though. (While they publicly rail against the poor eating wild-caught. Such is how the wheels turn.).
Yes, but I suspect they way they feed these fish farms (desired, commercially viable fish) is by catching large portions of other fish (which explains how they account for 44%), processing it (grinding, drying to pellets etc) and then selling it to the farmers.
It’s bad for the salmon (in terms of animal welfare) and it’s wrecking the local ecosystems. It’s not any sort of panacea.
We need to stop destroying ocean ecosystems, not just shift the damage around. Overfishing of wild stock, habitat destruction through bottom-trawling and intensive fish farming all need to be properly looked at.
> We need to stop destroying ocean ecosystems, not just shift the damage around. Overfishing of wild stock, habitat destruction through bottom-trawling and intensive fish farming all need to be properly looked at.
You criticise, yet don't provide any suitable recommendations or alternatives.
People like to eat fish and have done so since the beginning of our species.
The solution to overfishing, over consumption of fossil fuels, over consumption of beef etc is all the same in the current system. Impose appropriate taxes that adequately capture the impact of the negative externalities.
Living in unsustainable ways is ... well not sustainable.
If people have liked to eat fish since the start, then maybe we should leave some for the next generations.
Taxes isn't the right approach, in Brazil is taxes over taxes and the poor people is the real affected by them. They cannot eat fish frequently or only through processed food, which in turn, is mixed with many other things which are bad for their healthy too.
When should the tax stop being raised? The solution is not to make it so only the rich can eat fish, beef, etc. This idea is only ever proposed by people who think they will always be able to afford it or people who think no one should be able to enjoy animal meat.
When it has reached the cost of renewing the resource.
Taxing externalities isn't about "guaranteeing everyone can have access to the resource": that's circular. Taxing externalities is about ensuring that those who profit from a public good, also pay the public for the value of that good.
Hypothetical: If tomorrow it turns out that eating beef is somehow the ultimate cause of environmental destruction, and every cow fart requires $1MM in cleanup fees or humanity goes extinct, then we should tax cows at $1MM per fart, full stop. "But not everyone will be able to eat beef!" is not an argument, unless you want to say "We would rather all eat beef than survive as a species."
Of course: in reality it's not so clear cut. But the principle remains.
Of course: once you've determined a price for the good and levied taxes, you can then either use that price to clean up / renew the resource, or just distribute the money directly to citizens (see canada's "carbon price") to effectively pay people not to consume the resource. Same difference.
The solution to fossil fuels was not make gas cost 20 dollars a gallon (or an imagined unbounded amount) so only people who really need to drive can afford it. It was serious research into many different forms of energy. There are many old people who have their lively hoods tied to the fact that we ignore the science, but we do have solutions.
Propose some kind of research into lab grown meat, extremely cheap feed, or some unthought of billion dollar idea solution.
Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously.
A pigovian tax is not mutually exclusive with those options— in fact it incentivizes them. No need to do market planning for “lab grown meat” or whatever is the central planner’s fancy du jour: set a price and let the market figure it out.
Why have governments pick and choose “winning energy strategies” when you can let the market do it?
Literally how it works in practice with carbon credits today, your assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.
I take a lifecycle view. Early on, public subsidy of research is necessary. US President Carter and the Germans did a good job with that for solar. When you have a mature product 50 years later, that's when tax policy and/or industrial policy becomes more impactful. Industry itself is doing most of the innovating at this late stage, so you want policy to nudge existing consumers towards the preferred substitute. None of these policies are competing with one another, they are complementary. You can even use the tax revenue to fund the early-stage research of other moonshot technologies.
Actually in a lot of places the attempted solution was to put steadily escalating taxes on 'gas', to try to make people drive less. That plus put restrictions on vehicle efficiency to drive down fuel use, which can also be argued to push up car prices.
And look where that rather gentle approach got us - we've had decades of people knowing there's a climate crisis coming and here we are still burning fossil fuels for power.
> Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously.
So in your mind it is better to drive the seas to complete destruction than to limit catches and thereby push up the price?
You know this is self-limiting, right? In that if we kill everything in the seas, those people still won't get cheap fish, and the 'rich' will eat the last few at great expense?
Humans have historically done many things that we now find distasteful or unthinkable.
It may be in the future that fishing joins that list.
Abolition is the only alternative to immoral and unethical actions, but in terms of nutrition, there are plenty of ways to get the same nutrients, and ways to use seaweed to replicate some of the flavors.
> You criticise, yet don't provide any suitable recommendations or alternatives.
I have always hated this take in any context I've seen it. Refusing to even acknowledge a problem as a problem unless presented with a solution is such an infuriating way to be dismissed.
Sometimes things need to be addressed whether there’s an alternative or not, because they are damaging.
Onshore fish-farming is being developed. I don’t know enough about it to have any idea whether it can be made compatible with animal welfare or environmental responsibility.
But it also doesn’t matter. Sometimes you’re just going to need to stop wrecking the place.
This argument isnt convincing anyone. People are going to eat salmon. If you dont provide an ethical source they will go for unethical sources. The only option for getting people to stop consuming things that are bad is to provide better alternatives.
If an alternative isn’t found, then people are going to eat less fish one way or another.
I’m suggesting we do that through conservation rather than decimation. But you feel free to throw your hands up and watch the seas die because “people are going to eat salmon”.
Perhaps those who are so insistent that behaviour cannot change could come up with a solution, instead of helpless capitulation to a future of dead oceans.
The reality is that people are going to eat salmon. If you say all the ways of growing salmon are unacceptable people will just ignore you and go for the cheapest one. If you convince the government to tax salmon consumption the government will be removed. People really, really do not like to decrease consumption.
The reality is also that keeping on doing that and other activities like bottom-trawling is going to continue to wreck ecosystems.
Both of these things can be true.
You don’t get to push away the environmental damage these things cause because you like a fish fillet and won’t hear otherwise.
All I’m saying (and what conservationists are saying) is that if we carry on down this path we’re going to destroy the ocean ecosystems, and if we don’t want that we should stop. You seem to be replying indignantly that we are going to carry on regardless. OK, well that’s the choice humanity faces, isn’t it?
I wonder about engineering yourself a productive fishery instead of exploiting wild stocks.
Most of the ocean is practically a desert. The only productive places are near land, where deep water up wells and returns sunken nutrients back to the surface.
I'm sure we could study and engineer some sort of nutrient dumping and cycling scheme. I bet you could make vastly more food while leaving a lot of ocean alone.
The recent David Attenborough documentary Ocean suggested that the Papahānaumokuākea Marine conservation area off the coast of Hawaii had contributed to abundant fishing stock outside the reserve. It was suggested that if we reserved 30% of the ocean, we would see a huge increase in fisheries the world over.
Another recent discovery is that although we've damaged our fisheries significantly, oceanic ecosystems apparently recover much faster than terrestrial ecosystems if left untouched, within several years.
A lot of their species interests can’t be fish farmed. Some can but it’s not exactly economical to shark farm or squid farm. Mussels, shrimp/prons, clams, salmon, some tuna, trout, and smaller fish can be farmed effectively.
While China dominates the fisheries, Japan is still whaling. The oceanic deserts are getting worse every day.
The 44% mentioned in the data is actually composed of a large number of small family-run fishing boats, whose actual catch volumes are very low.In fact, China’s offshore catch (2.3 million tons in 2023, accounting for only ~10% of the global total and declining for three consecutive years) is far lower than its domestic aquaculture output (58.1 million tons).
One particular fishing tactic by Chinese fisherboats is horrendous.
They will approach a protected ecosystem, which is thriving with fish like that of the galapagos islands, for example. They will hang out right at the limit of the maritime nautical border with the native country.
Then they will shut down naval GPS transponders (disabling of AIS - Automatic Identification System) and during the night, all at the same time, cross into the country's maritime space and quickly get out before its caught by the local patrols. [1][2]
This happens a lot with smaller countries which cannot fight back.
There are other techniques that haven't been yet discussed, like, altering vessel measurements (Changing draft and length to obscure activity, e.g., during transshipment or EEZ entry) , and meeting with refrigerated cargo ships to transfer catch which is likely illegal.
These are the only ways they can sustain a 44% of fishing worldwide. If they did this in their home turf, their waters would be empty of life
The article only talks about visible fishing activity. But China operates many “dark fleets” where many unregistered boats sail along registered boats. They are fishing way more than the 44% that is being reported. These fleets will no doubt destroy ecosystems beyond repair.
That is not true at all. A very small percentage of our oceans are comprehensively monitored. There is a reason why MH370 could not be located via satellite imaging. Tracking fleets of boats all over the planet is going to be very tricky.
It's still very patchy, and likely will be for another decade of growth. Earth has 500 million km^2 of surface area. A 24-bit, 10 meter resolution recording of Earth's surface (a shoebox sized satellite in LEO can do this) at 1 image per minute, plus a 1 meter resolution recording at 1 image per hour, would make tracking relatively easy (modulo weather), and necessitate 36 uncompressed petabytes per day of data handling, probably more like 360 uncompressed petabytes when you factor in overlaps of satellite planes and imaging areas.
We can do this for, say, all the airfields in Russia, today. But the world is a much bigger place.
As laser communications equipment becomes more standardized and the LEO comms and LEO remote sensing constellations continue to grow, this will slowly expand in scope. But tracking and deconfliction of moving objects is just an inherently difficult thing to do with any confidence; It wouldn't be feasible at all without various AI algorithms. There are far lower hanging fruit as yet unpicked.
> why does it matter where they're fishing if they're selling it worldwide?
Regulation. Chinese boats fish in ways we block our own boats from. Those exports thus represent a regulatory workaround, victim the oceans, and a tool with which buyers can demand reciprocal regulation.
How does the worldwide sales address the damage they cause to marine ecosystems? That too when many countries regulate their own fisheries industry to avoid the same issue? This is like strip mining public property or someone else's private property without any authorization. Essentially, China makes money at everybody's expense.
How convenient. Getting on top of the mountain and pulling the ladder behind you. If rich countries were willing to really help those less fortunate (especially counties that they themselves looted in the past), this argument would have a lot more weight.
Is the rest of the world supposed to stay poor and desperate forever? Especially considering that rich countries still suck massive amounts of resources (and turn a blind eye to local corruption), and provide popular emigration destination for talented people who leave their homeland instead of helping develop it?
China is no longer a "poor country". And overfishing is harmful especially for poorer people who will be deprived of a relatively cheap source of food and export. Especially the smaller fishers. Somalia is probably the best example of this.
But no, the West has often been imperfect, no doubt about that, which is why these sort of restrictions and limitations were set up: to prevent repeating the mistakes of the past which hurt everyone. And yes, we probably should recognise more that the West got ahead partly in ways that harmed everyone. But none of that justifies what China is doing.
Nuance is required. Would you impose a 2 Sea Bass over 42cm limit per person on the residents of North Sentinel Island?
It’s all a spectrum. One nation cannot leapfrog the rest in its advancements then demand the rest follow its new norms, unless they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.
When they say global warming is killing fishing population, and avoid talking about the real problem - a huge ghost fleet using environmental devastating methods of fishing all over the planet
All energy on earth derives from 1) the sun or 2) geothermal
Energy is lost as you move further from those sources. Plants converting sunlight directly to usable energy are more efficient than a higher order animal eating another animal that ate another animal that ate a plant.
Now nature normally balances this hierarchy in a myriad of ways that you can go read about yourself.
The problem is humans have rapidly expanded and want to consume more than nature can provide and restock. We have exceeded the capacity for people surviving off animal products.
Attempts to produce more animal products is one of the major drivers of climate change, alongside things like concrete.
Short answer indeed. Cellulose, which is most of the plant mass, has a ton of energy stored in it but we can't access that while many animals we eat can.
So no one here seems willing to address the underlying problem. Population ! The Earth needs a break from the constant beating it takes from irresponsible Humans. "IF" possibly the Human race on this planet could be reduced significantly, the overall condition of life would be greatly improved. This is the Most Important Issue. NO ONE WILL GIVE THIS THE PROPER ATTENTION THIS PROBLEM NEEDS.
I find it interesting how China is so keen to develop EVs as a way to get away from oil dependency, yet other areas of their economy aren't treated with the same urgency.
Doesn't seem that confusing, they import most of their hydrocarbons so its a domestic security risk if/when they invade Taiwan. The US navy can blockade oil tankers but they arent going to be chasing fishing vessels around the ocean trying to stop fishing.
60/75m (~80%) metric tons of PRC seafood is from domestic aquaculture. That's one of the highest % of aquaculture share out of total fisheries of any country. 60% of global aquashare total. It's not urgent because it's already addressed, like EV, food security was literally Xi's first priority when he entered office with reduce food waste program.
People bitching about PRC fishing is like people bitching about PRC coal, i.e. most of coal use has stablized, with renewable making up new energy production. PRC DWF has also mostly stablized with seafood increase via aquaculture.
Except with coal as % of energy mix is way higher than PRC DWF as % of fisheries. AKA it's a made up problem, it so much as PRC is unique bad behaviour.
My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting was outlawed.
I worry that I live in a time when commercial fishing is not sufficiently regulated so that rather than being outlawed, it will simply become infeasible, with the attendant knock-on affects of countries which depend on the oceans for a significant portion of their protein.
There are now a greater tonnage of ships in the ocean than bony fish:
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.
Mostly pacific / south america focused to get US coastguard in there and build public opinion against PRC fishing... which is really proxy for hosting PRC ships, aka, imo foot in door to other docking relationships... like PLANavy. PRC economic integration with most of South America and Pacific Islands is almost forgone at this point, PRC trade/influence with these regions going to continue to grow, but prudent for US to hammer against fishing to at least spike efforts at any naval cooperation. Imagery of a Chinese destroyer docking in South America is domestically poison if muh Chinese dark fleet is raping the waters and only USCG is there to save the day. Except seems like PRC won the staring contest. TLDR is US started USCG campaign vs PRC DWF in early 2020s around Ecuador / Galapagos, tried to escalate to boarding a couple PRC DWF vessels to in 2022 in high seas... which PRC rejected... US tried to blacklist said PRC vessels from fishing in area, PRC procedrually lawfared around blacklist (search for SPRFMO drama)... and it's been status quo since, AFAIK no more attempted USCG boarding of PRC DWF, especially on highseas, at least publically.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fwiw the United States is doing a lot of effective work to combat this. A lot of countries have large EEZs covering a lot of the pacific but have no navy to police it with. The last coast guard commandant, Adm. Fagan, intorduced bilateral law enforcement agreements with multiple pacific island countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bilateral_Maritime_Law_En...) to police their EEZs with US coast guard vessels (the fig leaf used to be you'd have one foreign captain and deputize the whole ship, but now there are 'no rider' agreements that basically is 'change the flag, don't have to change anyone aboard'). China is deterred, the fish are saved, sovereignty for independent states is safeguarded, and the United States secures the world again.
Anyway, she was yet another casualty of MAGA! She was forced out on Trump's first day because of DEI, presumably because she was the first woman to run a service. For now, the program still survives, both funding and personnel-wise (modulo a few hull-days spent running around the southern border and the... uh, gulf of ~america~ mexico?), but man.
To learn more, I'd listen to war on the rocks! They have great guests.
Bottom trawling in particular seems horrendous. Here is Attenborough narrating about the horrors of it and how it affects the ocean floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXp3jo_uGOQ
Concrete pylons with blades?
just a concrete blocks is enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7AnKcMVEio
ignore the marble sclupture, it's only a few of them deployed for attraction and attention.
I work directly in this field.
One massive problem with data collection on fishing, is that the world is absolutely littered with outright fake AIS data, where the vast majority are registered as Chinese vessels. Anyone can purchase a AIS transmitter, and spoof the data. Some areas are much more affected - especially out in the middle of the pacific ocean, and the Indian sea. Some areas there can have almost 100% spoofed AIS data. So a lot of work goes toward filtering these out.
When working on this kind of analysis, you have a bunch of data sources: AIS, VMS, LRIT, which are either land or satellite borne. Other than these, you have SAR, Optical, NRD (navigation radar detectors), and some other - but with these, you obviously need to have some classification and correlation system. AIS is by far the most common source, and it is also the one that is easiest to manipulate.
Vessels can simply turn off their AIS transponders, while out at sea. And it can easily be spoofed. But a lot of the garbage AIS data is really just that, random garbage. Just some random MMSI attached to a Chinese flag, and a completely random sailing pattern. These are relatively easy to filter out, but often times they share the MMSI with actual vessels - many which are indeed Chinese vessels.
FWIW, China also produces enormous (enormous) quantities of seafood from caged underwater oceanic farms. It's the future of fishing IMHO.
The rich, everywhere in the world, will continue to seek wild-caught though. (While they publicly rail against the poor eating wild-caught. Such is how the wheels turn.).
Yes, but I suspect they way they feed these fish farms (desired, commercially viable fish) is by catching large portions of other fish (which explains how they account for 44%), processing it (grinding, drying to pellets etc) and then selling it to the farmers.
My past comments, based on quick dives into the topic:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40913385
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36118309
Search some of the keywords in those comments if you are interested in knowing more.
> While they publicly rail against the poor eating wild-caught.
Example?
Weekly multi-ton carbon-footprint private jet trips for me, cardboard drinking straws for thee.
Its not the billionaires advocating for cardboard straws
It was the rich who brought Individual 'carbon footprint' concept in order to put guilt of pollution on poor and general public.
https://science.thewire.in/environment/big-oil-hijack-carbon...
who said anything about billionaires? The term used by gp was "the rich", and that's much broader than billionaires
Or we could just not eat fish, like I haven't done for all my 36 years of life?
Tasmania produces a lot of caged salmon.
It’s bad for the salmon (in terms of animal welfare) and it’s wrecking the local ecosystems. It’s not any sort of panacea.
We need to stop destroying ocean ecosystems, not just shift the damage around. Overfishing of wild stock, habitat destruction through bottom-trawling and intensive fish farming all need to be properly looked at.
> We need to stop destroying ocean ecosystems, not just shift the damage around. Overfishing of wild stock, habitat destruction through bottom-trawling and intensive fish farming all need to be properly looked at.
You criticise, yet don't provide any suitable recommendations or alternatives.
People like to eat fish and have done so since the beginning of our species.
The solution to overfishing, over consumption of fossil fuels, over consumption of beef etc is all the same in the current system. Impose appropriate taxes that adequately capture the impact of the negative externalities.
Living in unsustainable ways is ... well not sustainable.
If people have liked to eat fish since the start, then maybe we should leave some for the next generations.
Taxes isn't the right approach, in Brazil is taxes over taxes and the poor people is the real affected by them. They cannot eat fish frequently or only through processed food, which in turn, is mixed with many other things which are bad for their healthy too.
That is the whole point. The taxes are there to reduce consumption, and the people who reduce their consumption first are the poor.
When should the tax stop being raised? The solution is not to make it so only the rich can eat fish, beef, etc. This idea is only ever proposed by people who think they will always be able to afford it or people who think no one should be able to enjoy animal meat.
When it has reached the cost of renewing the resource.
Taxing externalities isn't about "guaranteeing everyone can have access to the resource": that's circular. Taxing externalities is about ensuring that those who profit from a public good, also pay the public for the value of that good.
Hypothetical: If tomorrow it turns out that eating beef is somehow the ultimate cause of environmental destruction, and every cow fart requires $1MM in cleanup fees or humanity goes extinct, then we should tax cows at $1MM per fart, full stop. "But not everyone will be able to eat beef!" is not an argument, unless you want to say "We would rather all eat beef than survive as a species."
Of course: in reality it's not so clear cut. But the principle remains.
Of course: once you've determined a price for the good and levied taxes, you can then either use that price to clean up / renew the resource, or just distribute the money directly to citizens (see canada's "carbon price") to effectively pay people not to consume the resource. Same difference.
The solution to fossil fuels was not make gas cost 20 dollars a gallon (or an imagined unbounded amount) so only people who really need to drive can afford it. It was serious research into many different forms of energy. There are many old people who have their lively hoods tied to the fact that we ignore the science, but we do have solutions.
Propose some kind of research into lab grown meat, extremely cheap feed, or some unthought of billion dollar idea solution.
Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously.
A pigovian tax is not mutually exclusive with those options— in fact it incentivizes them. No need to do market planning for “lab grown meat” or whatever is the central planner’s fancy du jour: set a price and let the market figure it out.
Why have governments pick and choose “winning energy strategies” when you can let the market do it?
Literally how it works in practice with carbon credits today, your assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.
I take a lifecycle view. Early on, public subsidy of research is necessary. US President Carter and the Germans did a good job with that for solar. When you have a mature product 50 years later, that's when tax policy and/or industrial policy becomes more impactful. Industry itself is doing most of the innovating at this late stage, so you want policy to nudge existing consumers towards the preferred substitute. None of these policies are competing with one another, they are complementary. You can even use the tax revenue to fund the early-stage research of other moonshot technologies.
Actually in a lot of places the attempted solution was to put steadily escalating taxes on 'gas', to try to make people drive less. That plus put restrictions on vehicle efficiency to drive down fuel use, which can also be argued to push up car prices.
And look where that rather gentle approach got us - we've had decades of people knowing there's a climate crisis coming and here we are still burning fossil fuels for power.
> Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously.
So in your mind it is better to drive the seas to complete destruction than to limit catches and thereby push up the price?
You know this is self-limiting, right? In that if we kill everything in the seas, those people still won't get cheap fish, and the 'rich' will eat the last few at great expense?
You give the tax back to people so they're no worse off on average, and are better off if they don't overly engage in destroying the commons.
As for the actual tax rate, I will defer to the economic literature on this subject, but the answer will invariably be a pragmatic one.
Humans have historically done many things that we now find distasteful or unthinkable.
It may be in the future that fishing joins that list.
Abolition is the only alternative to immoral and unethical actions, but in terms of nutrition, there are plenty of ways to get the same nutrients, and ways to use seaweed to replicate some of the flavors.
> People like to eat fish and have done so since the beginning of our species.
The slaves are necessary to the economic welfare of the south and have been a corner of empire economies for millennia.
People like to drink wine sweetened with lead and have been doing so since we can remember.
How are we even going to get rain without the sacrifices?
The solution for both preservation of ecosystems _and_ fisheries is creating marine reserves like Papahānaumokuākea.
> You criticise, yet don't provide any suitable recommendations or alternatives.
I have always hated this take in any context I've seen it. Refusing to even acknowledge a problem as a problem unless presented with a solution is such an infuriating way to be dismissed.
Just eat the fish that's available in your waters.
Unless you're landlocked and your rivers have gone to shit too.
Sometimes things need to be addressed whether there’s an alternative or not, because they are damaging.
Onshore fish-farming is being developed. I don’t know enough about it to have any idea whether it can be made compatible with animal welfare or environmental responsibility.
But it also doesn’t matter. Sometimes you’re just going to need to stop wrecking the place.
This argument isnt convincing anyone. People are going to eat salmon. If you dont provide an ethical source they will go for unethical sources. The only option for getting people to stop consuming things that are bad is to provide better alternatives.
If an alternative isn’t found, then people are going to eat less fish one way or another.
I’m suggesting we do that through conservation rather than decimation. But you feel free to throw your hands up and watch the seas die because “people are going to eat salmon”.
Perhaps those who are so insistent that behaviour cannot change could come up with a solution, instead of helpless capitulation to a future of dead oceans.
The reality is that people are going to eat salmon. If you say all the ways of growing salmon are unacceptable people will just ignore you and go for the cheapest one. If you convince the government to tax salmon consumption the government will be removed. People really, really do not like to decrease consumption.
The reality is also that keeping on doing that and other activities like bottom-trawling is going to continue to wreck ecosystems.
Both of these things can be true.
You don’t get to push away the environmental damage these things cause because you like a fish fillet and won’t hear otherwise.
All I’m saying (and what conservationists are saying) is that if we carry on down this path we’re going to destroy the ocean ecosystems, and if we don’t want that we should stop. You seem to be replying indignantly that we are going to carry on regardless. OK, well that’s the choice humanity faces, isn’t it?
The scale of Chinese fishing is massive, along with the labor needs to process what is caught.
There was a story [0] that ran in the New Yorker a year ago that detailed how North Koreans are sent to Chinese seafood plants in forced labor.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39504981
Man, the amount of misery going on in this world, for both humans and animals, is mind boggling when you stop trying to ignore it.
I wonder about engineering yourself a productive fishery instead of exploiting wild stocks.
Most of the ocean is practically a desert. The only productive places are near land, where deep water up wells and returns sunken nutrients back to the surface.
I'm sure we could study and engineer some sort of nutrient dumping and cycling scheme. I bet you could make vastly more food while leaving a lot of ocean alone.
The recent David Attenborough documentary Ocean suggested that the Papahānaumokuākea Marine conservation area off the coast of Hawaii had contributed to abundant fishing stock outside the reserve. It was suggested that if we reserved 30% of the ocean, we would see a huge increase in fisheries the world over.
Another recent discovery is that although we've damaged our fisheries significantly, oceanic ecosystems apparently recover much faster than terrestrial ecosystems if left untouched, within several years.
Totally, they do a lot of this, fish farming.
There are places famous for it, and there are other places like French Polynesia where they use existing atols as places to do it.
It's not easy, but it can be very productive.
A lot of their species interests can’t be fish farmed. Some can but it’s not exactly economical to shark farm or squid farm. Mussels, shrimp/prons, clams, salmon, some tuna, trout, and smaller fish can be farmed effectively.
While China dominates the fisheries, Japan is still whaling. The oceanic deserts are getting worse every day.
You don't need to farm squid since it's one of the species that is benefitting from climate change and overfishing. https://www.science.org/content/article/world-octopus-and-sq...
the bay between shenzhen and hong kong is basically a giant oyster farm which they say also helps clean up the water. so people do it with some stuff
The 44% mentioned in the data is actually composed of a large number of small family-run fishing boats, whose actual catch volumes are very low.In fact, China’s offshore catch (2.3 million tons in 2023, accounting for only ~10% of the global total and declining for three consecutive years) is far lower than its domestic aquaculture output (58.1 million tons).
And that's the exactly reason the title says 44% instead of 10%, because 10% does not make a good headline
People here don't care about the facts you're stating
One particular fishing tactic by Chinese fisherboats is horrendous.
They will approach a protected ecosystem, which is thriving with fish like that of the galapagos islands, for example. They will hang out right at the limit of the maritime nautical border with the native country.
Then they will shut down naval GPS transponders (disabling of AIS - Automatic Identification System) and during the night, all at the same time, cross into the country's maritime space and quickly get out before its caught by the local patrols. [1][2]
This happens a lot with smaller countries which cannot fight back.
There are other techniques that haven't been yet discussed, like, altering vessel measurements (Changing draft and length to obscure activity, e.g., during transshipment or EEZ entry) , and meeting with refrigerated cargo ships to transfer catch which is likely illegal.
These are the only ways they can sustain a 44% of fishing worldwide. If they did this in their home turf, their waters would be empty of life
[1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/pesca-ile...
[2] https://usa.oceana.org/press-releases/oceana-analysis-shows-...
And it does so on seas that aren't even remotely close to China. They're looting the entire Pacific Ocean.
The article only talks about visible fishing activity. But China operates many “dark fleets” where many unregistered boats sail along registered boats. They are fishing way more than the 44% that is being reported. These fleets will no doubt destroy ecosystems beyond repair.
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/new-evidence-suggests-chin...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-19/how-china-is-plunderi...
https://time.com/6328528/investigation-chinese-fishing-fleet...
The US has around 300 vessels for distant-water fishing.
Five years ago, China was assessed to have 17,000.
Thankfully with satellites and machine learning nothing is dark these days.
That is not true at all. A very small percentage of our oceans are comprehensively monitored. There is a reason why MH370 could not be located via satellite imaging. Tracking fleets of boats all over the planet is going to be very tricky.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/08/how-data-can-heal-ou...
It's still very patchy, and likely will be for another decade of growth. Earth has 500 million km^2 of surface area. A 24-bit, 10 meter resolution recording of Earth's surface (a shoebox sized satellite in LEO can do this) at 1 image per minute, plus a 1 meter resolution recording at 1 image per hour, would make tracking relatively easy (modulo weather), and necessitate 36 uncompressed petabytes per day of data handling, probably more like 360 uncompressed petabytes when you factor in overlaps of satellite planes and imaging areas.
We can do this for, say, all the airfields in Russia, today. But the world is a much bigger place.
As laser communications equipment becomes more standardized and the LEO comms and LEO remote sensing constellations continue to grow, this will slowly expand in scope. But tracking and deconfliction of moving objects is just an inherently difficult thing to do with any confidence; It wouldn't be feasible at all without various AI algorithms. There are far lower hanging fruit as yet unpicked.
They export tens of billions of dollars in seafood every year, why does it matter where they're fishing if they're selling it worldwide?
> why does it matter where they're fishing if they're selling it worldwide?
Regulation. Chinese boats fish in ways we block our own boats from. Those exports thus represent a regulatory workaround, victim the oceans, and a tool with which buyers can demand reciprocal regulation.
How does the worldwide sales address the damage they cause to marine ecosystems? That too when many countries regulate their own fisheries industry to avoid the same issue? This is like strip mining public property or someone else's private property without any authorization. Essentially, China makes money at everybody's expense.
Who makes the profit? Duh.
You might be right, but it's certainly not a "duh". Consumer surplus exists in addition to producer surplus.
Externalities also exist-- funny how the dead seafloor and collapsing local fisheries don’t show up in the export statistics.
I would agree, but that's beside the point I was making.
Isn't it normal for countries to fish in seas that aren't remotely close to them?
Is there a single country in Asia that doesn't practice distant water fishing?
I think the main concern is over IUU fishing, and China's fleet has been linked to that.
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It's very hard to take your comment in good faith.
Societal expectations were very different back then. Should we also slam those trying to end modern slavery by mentioning slavers of the past?
How convenient. Getting on top of the mountain and pulling the ladder behind you. If rich countries were willing to really help those less fortunate (especially counties that they themselves looted in the past), this argument would have a lot more weight.
Is the rest of the world supposed to stay poor and desperate forever? Especially considering that rich countries still suck massive amounts of resources (and turn a blind eye to local corruption), and provide popular emigration destination for talented people who leave their homeland instead of helping develop it?
China is no longer a "poor country". And overfishing is harmful especially for poorer people who will be deprived of a relatively cheap source of food and export. Especially the smaller fishers. Somalia is probably the best example of this.
But no, the West has often been imperfect, no doubt about that, which is why these sort of restrictions and limitations were set up: to prevent repeating the mistakes of the past which hurt everyone. And yes, we probably should recognise more that the West got ahead partly in ways that harmed everyone. But none of that justifies what China is doing.
Nuance is required. Would you impose a 2 Sea Bass over 42cm limit per person on the residents of North Sentinel Island?
It’s all a spectrum. One nation cannot leapfrog the rest in its advancements then demand the rest follow its new norms, unless they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.
There’s zero nuance required for China, it’s a modern economy and should definitely be held to modern standards.
There’s more to a peoples than the economy
Not in this context.
Exactly
When they say global warming is killing fishing population, and avoid talking about the real problem - a huge ghost fleet using environmental devastating methods of fishing all over the planet
The fact that so many people rely on eating other animals is ruining the planet.
How so?
Short answer is energy efficiency.
All energy on earth derives from 1) the sun or 2) geothermal
Energy is lost as you move further from those sources. Plants converting sunlight directly to usable energy are more efficient than a higher order animal eating another animal that ate another animal that ate a plant.
Now nature normally balances this hierarchy in a myriad of ways that you can go read about yourself.
The problem is humans have rapidly expanded and want to consume more than nature can provide and restock. We have exceeded the capacity for people surviving off animal products.
Attempts to produce more animal products is one of the major drivers of climate change, alongside things like concrete.
Short answer indeed. Cellulose, which is most of the plant mass, has a ton of energy stored in it but we can't access that while many animals we eat can.
Really? The oceans are being overfished due to dietary demands for fish.
What do you think fish eat ?
Tell that to the Eagles in this backyard eating chickens.
So no one here seems willing to address the underlying problem. Population ! The Earth needs a break from the constant beating it takes from irresponsible Humans. "IF" possibly the Human race on this planet could be reduced significantly, the overall condition of life would be greatly improved. This is the Most Important Issue. NO ONE WILL GIVE THIS THE PROPER ATTENTION THIS PROBLEM NEEDS.
I find it interesting how China is so keen to develop EVs as a way to get away from oil dependency, yet other areas of their economy aren't treated with the same urgency.
Doesn't seem that confusing, they import most of their hydrocarbons so its a domestic security risk if/when they invade Taiwan. The US navy can blockade oil tankers but they arent going to be chasing fishing vessels around the ocean trying to stop fishing.
What I'm describing is much broader: Food security i.e. running out of fish to extract from the seas.
60/75m (~80%) metric tons of PRC seafood is from domestic aquaculture. That's one of the highest % of aquaculture share out of total fisheries of any country. 60% of global aquashare total. It's not urgent because it's already addressed, like EV, food security was literally Xi's first priority when he entered office with reduce food waste program.
People bitching about PRC fishing is like people bitching about PRC coal, i.e. most of coal use has stablized, with renewable making up new energy production. PRC DWF has also mostly stablized with seafood increase via aquaculture.
Except with coal as % of energy mix is way higher than PRC DWF as % of fisheries. AKA it's a made up problem, it so much as PRC is unique bad behaviour.
it's for the dough, bro.
should be obv.
also, ever heard of the asian concept of "face"?
it exists at country level too, not just individual level.
My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting was outlawed.
I worry that I live in a time when commercial fishing is not sufficiently regulated so that rather than being outlawed, it will simply become infeasible, with the attendant knock-on affects of countries which depend on the oceans for a significant portion of their protein.
There are now a greater tonnage of ships in the ocean than bony fish:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/33/
What will be the next marker to be dropped?
Makes one wish that we could manage something like to Hal Clement's "Raindrop":
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Sph...
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.
Yes. It is higly manipulative. But people are licking it up.
It is kinda scary how effective these Washington think tanks are manufacturing consent for a naval confrontation with China.
Mostly pacific / south america focused to get US coastguard in there and build public opinion against PRC fishing... which is really proxy for hosting PRC ships, aka, imo foot in door to other docking relationships... like PLANavy. PRC economic integration with most of South America and Pacific Islands is almost forgone at this point, PRC trade/influence with these regions going to continue to grow, but prudent for US to hammer against fishing to at least spike efforts at any naval cooperation. Imagery of a Chinese destroyer docking in South America is domestically poison if muh Chinese dark fleet is raping the waters and only USCG is there to save the day. Except seems like PRC won the staring contest. TLDR is US started USCG campaign vs PRC DWF in early 2020s around Ecuador / Galapagos, tried to escalate to boarding a couple PRC DWF vessels to in 2022 in high seas... which PRC rejected... US tried to blacklist said PRC vessels from fishing in area, PRC procedrually lawfared around blacklist (search for SPRFMO drama)... and it's been status quo since, AFAIK no more attempted USCG boarding of PRC DWF, especially on highseas, at least publically.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Fwiw the United States is doing a lot of effective work to combat this. A lot of countries have large EEZs covering a lot of the pacific but have no navy to police it with. The last coast guard commandant, Adm. Fagan, intorduced bilateral law enforcement agreements with multiple pacific island countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bilateral_Maritime_Law_En...) to police their EEZs with US coast guard vessels (the fig leaf used to be you'd have one foreign captain and deputize the whole ship, but now there are 'no rider' agreements that basically is 'change the flag, don't have to change anyone aboard'). China is deterred, the fish are saved, sovereignty for independent states is safeguarded, and the United States secures the world again.
Anyway, she was yet another casualty of MAGA! She was forced out on Trump's first day because of DEI, presumably because she was the first woman to run a service. For now, the program still survives, both funding and personnel-wise (modulo a few hull-days spent running around the southern border and the... uh, gulf of ~america~ mexico?), but man.
To learn more, I'd listen to war on the rocks! They have great guests.
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and with a hell of a username to boot
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