Since 2018, foreign vessels have spent close to 1 million hours fishing between Argentina’s maritime border and the high seas, yet spent 600,000 hours ‘in the dark,’ suspected of illegal fishing within Argentine waters in the South Atlantic, according to a report by the ocean conservation organization Oceana.
Going dark refers to when ships appear to disable their electronic tracking devices, or Automatic Identification Systems (AIS), and is associated with illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which fuels overfishing and undermines efforts to protect the seas and oceans.
IUU fishing draws in global revenues of $10 billion to $36 billion per year and is entangled with other illicit activities such as human trafficking, corruption, and organized crime.
The majority of the ships (69%) detected around Argentine waters were Chinese, with vessels from South Korea, Taiwan and Spain making up another 25%. In terms of the total amount of fishing time in the waters, Chinese vessels made up 70% while Argentine vessels consisted of less than 1%. The dominant vessel used in the region was the squid jigger, which is geared toward catching the lucrative Argentine shortfin squid that is part of the rich and diverse marine life found in Argentina’s vast waters.
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Maritime conflict heats up as China’s fishing fleet goes dark in Argentine waters