World Oceans Day is celebrated each year across the globe every June 8.
The United Nations said the yearly event seeks to generate awareness on the impact of human activities on oceans, which is gaining relevance especially in the West Philippine Sea.
“World Oceans Day reminds everyone of the major role the oceans have in everyday life,” the UN said. “They are the lungs of our planet and a major source of food and medicine and a critical part of the biosphere,” it added.
As part of this year’s celebration of World Oceans Day, the global impact of illegal fishing, especially by China in the West Philippine Sea, is recalled.
A study published in 2020 in the scientific journal Science Advances revealed that between 2005 to 2014, at least 7.7 to 14 million metric tons of illegal fish catches were traded illicitly each year.
As a result, between $8.9 and $17.2 billion in gross revenues were lost to illicit trading.
The study also found that Asia, Africa, and South America were dealt a huge blow in illegal catch and gross revenue losses during the same period.
Analysis by data consumer company Statista on Tuesday (June 8) noted that the Asian continent loses at least $6.7 billion in annual gross revenue from illegal fishing and trading.
“Assuming that 50 to 80 percent of illicit commercial catch and 10 to 30 percent of the illicit artisanal catch is traded, up to $3.4 billion is lost every year in the Western Central Pacific (incl. the South China Sea), while up to $2.0 billion vanishes annually in Northeast Asia and up to $1.5 billion of revenue goes missing in the Eastern Indian Ocean every year,” said Statista’s Katharina Buccholz, citing the 2020 study.
The Central Eastern Atlantic lost around $4.3 billion each year.
Among the countries that suffered the most revenue loss due to illicit fishing were China, the Philippines, the US Pacific territories, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Mauritania, Russia, and Guinea.
The harmful economic impact of the illicit trade of illegally caught fish does not only harm annual revenues of regions or countries worldwide.
According to the study, illegal fishing has also brought to Asia food insecurity, job loss, and income loss for local fishers.
In 2019, out of a total of 152 coastal states assessed worldwide, China gained the worst scores for their degree of exposure to and quality of response toward illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
https://www.iuufishingindex.net/
China, which operates the world’s largest overseas fishing fleet with 200,000 to 800,000 fishing boats, accounts for nearly half of the world’s fishing activity— according to an article published in 2020 at the Yale School of the Environment.
Aside from being the world’s biggest seafood exporter, China’s population also accounts for over a third of the total fish consumption worldwide.
“Having depleted the seas close to home, the Chinese fishing fleet has been sailing farther afield in recent years to exploit the waters of other countries, including those in West Africa and Latin America, where enforcement tends to be weaker as local governments lack the resources or inclination to police their waters,” said investigative reporter Ian Urbina in his article.
“Most Chinese distant-water ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as local boats from Senegal or Mexico might catch in a year” he added.
China has also expanded its maritime presence in Northeast Asia and most notably in the West Philippine Sea—causing the still unresolved territorial dispute and tension between the Philippines and China.
This was despite the international arbitral ruling in The Hague in 2016 which declared China’s mythical nine-dash claim to most of the South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea, as invalid and baseless.
China, according to the ruling, violated Philippine sovereignty and Filipinos’ right to fish and explore resources in the West Philippine Sea. Beijing considered the ruling as trash and does not recognize it.
The Philippines, along with fellow Southeast Asian neighbors Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, have overlapping claims to the sea along with China. Despite an agreement to refrain from provocative actions, China has continued to expand and militarize territories that it claims in the maritime region.
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