China’s fishing fleet - the world’s biggest - is taking ever larger volumes of Argentina’s resources in a state-sponsored campaign of both legal and illegal fishing as stocks become depleted in waters closer to home, an Argentinian environmental group said.
Many Chinese boats are legitimately registered to sail under the Argentine flag and fish in its waters, while and at the same time, a growing number of Chinese fishing vessels are operating illegally under flags of other countries, the group El Círculo de Políticas Ambientales said in a report.In the past, Chinese boats might sit at the edge of Argentina’s exclusive economic zone and switch off their automatic identification systems to conduct occasional encroachments, said the author of the report, marine conservation expert Milko Schvartzman.
