Beyond decimating local populations of Pacific Flying Squid, which have declined by more than 70%, the vast and aggressive fleet is likely driving North Korean fishermen in smaller wooden boats further out to sea, where many of their engines either break down or run out of fuel. Drifting on the open sea, many of them never make it home. In 2019, more than 158 of these ‘ghost boats’ washed up on Japan’s coast, many with dead bodies inside. So many North Koreans have disappeared at sea in recent years that port towns like Chongjin are now called “widows’ villages”. “This is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by a single industrial fleet operating in another nation’s waters,” says Jaeyoon Park, a data scientist from Global Fishing Watch who travelled with Ian aboard a South Korean vessel to track down the fleet firsthand. Traveling at night, they witnessed a group of 10 Chinese vessels sailing with their transponders off, heading into North Korean waters. The squid ships would not respond to radio calls, and when launching a drone, one of the Chinese fishing captains suddenly charged toward the team’s boat, coming within 10 meters to ward them off.
Many of the fishing stocks closest to China’s shores have collapsed from overfishing and industrialization, which is why the Chinese government heavily subsidizes its fishermen, who sail the world in search of new grounds. Often these boats are fishing illegally in other countries’ national waters, according to analysis by C4ADS, a marine research firm.
The investigation took over a year and a half to conduct and was a collaboration between NBC News and The Outlaw Ocean Project, which is a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C. that focuses on reporting about environmental and human rights crimes at sea. The story is an extremely important one and is being covered today in 20 news outlets in more than 10 different languages. Despite the seemingly insurmountable scale of the problem, Ian highlights the positive aspect of now being able to track and monitor such fleets – a capability that didn’t even exist five years ago. One of the takeaway lessons of this investigation was the sense of hope it offers for policing the world’s ocean. But it also shows the lack of governance at sea, including human rights, labor and environmental abuses that occur offshore, often with impunity. The discovery of this fleet raises further questions about the ways that overfishing by China and other countries is jeopardizing global food security, ocean health, geopolitical stability and the rule of international law.
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