A new study led by scientists at the University of British Columbia has found that Chinese fishing boats are catching much more foreign fish than they are reporting.
Chinese fishing boats catch about US$11.5 billion worth of fish from beyond their country’s own waters each year - but the paper estimates that China’s foreign catch is actually 12 times larger than the catch it reports to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Using a new method that analyses the type of fishing vessels used by Chinese operators around the world and their catch capacity, the UBC-led research team estimates Chinese foreign fishing at 4.6 million tonnes per year, taken from the waters of at least 90 countries – including 3.1 million tonnes from African waters, mainly West Africa.
This new method consists of analysing scholarly articles, news reports and expert knowledge to estimate the number and types of Chinese vessels fishing in other countries’ waters. This information is then combined with published data on the amount of catch per vessel type to estimate total catch.
While the new method contains uncertainties, it provides crucial information when official reports alone are insufficient or untrustworthy. It may soon be used to calculate the catches of other countries that fish around the world, such as Spain.
“China hasn’t been forthcoming about its fisheries catches,” says Dirk Zeller, senior research fellow with UBC’s Sea Around Us Project and the study’s co-author. “While not reporting catches doesn’t necessarily mean the fishing is illegal – there could be agreements between these countries and China that allow fishing – we simply don’t know for sure as this information just isn’t available.”
The paper has been published in the journal Fish and Fisheries.
