Launched on International Day for the Fight Against Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing (5 June 2025), new Oceana analysis of China’s global fishing activity worldwide reports that the country’s 57,000 industrial fishing vessels dominated 44% of the world’s fishing activity between 2022 and 2024.
“To protect our oceans and fisheries, we must know who is fishing and where,” said Dr Max Valentine, Illegal Fishing and Transparency Campaign Director and Senior Scientist at Oceana. “It is critical that we have eyes on the seas, paying close attention to the world’s largest fishing fleets, especially from China, which have been linked to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and human rights abuses at sea. The sheer scale of China’s distant-water fleet has a profound impact on marine ecosystems worldwide. Transparency at sea is essential, not just to track distant-water fleets, but to hold bad actors accountable, protect vulnerable communities, and safeguard the sustainability of our ocean for future generations.”
Key takeaways from Oceana’s analysis of China’s apparent fishing activity over a three-year period ( from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2024) include:
- 57,000 fishing vessels, primarily trawlers, flagged to China appeared to fish for more than 110 million hours
- China’s fishing vessels appeared to conduct 44% of the global fishing activity during this period
- Chinese vessels accounted for 30% of all fishing activity on the high seas, appearing to fish for more than 8.3 million hours
- China’s fishing vessels were most active in South Korea (11.8 million hours), Taiwan (4.4 million hours), Japan (1.5 million hours), Kiribati (almost 425,000 hours) and Papua New Guinea (over 415,000 hours)
- China appeared to fish in more than 90 countries’ waters for more than 22 million hours
Oceana is insisting that increased transparency in global fisheries is critical and is calling on governments to require vessel monitoring for both their fishing fleets and vessels they authorise to fish in their waters.
The analysis used data from Global Fishing Watch (GFW), an independent non-profit founded by Oceana in partnership with Google and SkyTruth. Oceana also noted that the analysis reflected only a partial view of China’s fishing activities during this time, as it includes only those vessels flagged to the country and transmitting automatic identification system (AIS) data, making them “visible” to public tracking systems.
