North Korea ‘ghost ships’ washed up in Japan because of China’s ‘dark’ fishing fleet, NGO says

The report’s authors used varied satellite tv for pc applied sciences to research marine visitors in northeast Asia in 2017 and 2018 and discovered that tons of of Chinese fishing vessels had been crusing in waters off North Korea. The Chinese ships gave the impression to be fishing there illegally, pushing North Korea’s personal fleet, which is poorly geared up to journey lengthy distances, additional away from the North Korean coast and into Russian and Japanese waters.

But that doesn’t seem to have deterred some 900 Chinese ships in 2017 and 700 the next 12 months, in keeping with Global Fishing Watch’s report.

The nonprofit mentioned these Chinese ships doubtless caught greater than 160,000 metric tons of Pacific flying squid, one of the area’s most respected seafood merchandise, in 2017 and 2018 — greater than South Korea and Japan mixed throughout the identical interval. The estimated catch was value greater than $440 million.

Jaeyoon Park, a senior knowledge scientist at Global Fishing Watch and co-lead creator of the research, mentioned that the vessels noticed comprised “about one-third the size of China’s entire distant water fishing fleet.”

“It is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by vessels originating from one country operating in another nation’s waters,” he mentioned.

With so many ships close to the North Korean coast, the nation’s personal fishing fleet was then pushed out, pressured to sail additional away from shore to search out their catch, and the results had been lethal, in keeping with Jungsam Lee, one other one of the research’s co-authors.

“It is too dangerous for them to work in the same waters as the Chinese trawlers,” Lee mentioned. “That’s why they’re pushed to work in Russian and Japanese waters and that explains why some of North Korea’s damaged vessels showed up on the beaches of Japan.”

CNN has reached out to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for remark.

A sustainability situation

Northeast Asia’s waters are some of essentially the most opaque and contested seas and fisheries anyplace in the world. China, Russia, Japan and the 2 Koreas are all engaged in some kind of territorial dispute with each other.

Fish shares there have been declining dramatically in current years, one other main downside that the events have did not work out. Pacific flying squid shares have dropped by 80% in South Korean waters and 82% Japanese waters since 2003, in keeping with Global Fishing Watch.

Experts like Park consider that although Japan and South Korea have labored independently labored to make squid fishing extra sustainable, “the absence of multilateral cooperation and information-sharing between all the countries involved in this transboundary fishery means it is impossible to get sound science and a regional management plan in place for the stock.”

South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and fisheries mentioned it was reviewing the findings, whereas Masanori Miyahara, the president of the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, mentioned in an announcement accompanying the Global Fishing Watch research that the dearth of shared knowledge is “is a major challenge considering the critical importance of squid in the region.”

“Illegal fishing in these waters is a very serious matter in Japan,” Miyahara mentioned.

Park mentioned his staff’s analysis has highlighted a “fundamental failure in properly and transparently managing a shared resource” and that there’s an “urgent need for cooperation between the countries involved in this fishery.”