Sea Control - Sea Control 212 - The Chinese Fishing Fleet in the Galapagos with Dr. Tabitha Mallory & Dr. Ian Ralby

Episode Date: November 22, 2020

Link: Evolution of the Fleet: A Closer Look at the Chinese Fishing Vessels Off the Galapagos, Dr. Tabitha Mallory & Dr. Ian Ralby, CIMSEC, October 19, 2020.

Hey folks, Jared here. I'm normally pretty excited about our guests in our episodes. This one might be another level though. So today we have Dr. Tabitha Mallory and Dr. Ian Ralby, who recently co-authored our most popular article on SimSec this year. It's about the Chinese fishing fleet in the Galapagos. Do you have a question about the Chinese distant water fishing fleet? It's probably getting answered in the next hour on this podcast. These two are phenomenal guests. I really cannot wait for you to hear this. As a reminder, all views expressed are our own and not representative of any institution with which we might otherwise be associated as always when advertising strongly recommend our friends in the simsec podcast network and our second podcast feed

the bilge pumps you can find alex drack jamie and a pile of empty iron brew bottles on apple podcast stitcher spotify and wherever else you download your podcast it's more low-key slightly less serious approach to current events in the maritime domain and naval history check them out wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Aloha, Shoemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today, we're discussing the Chinese fishing fleet operating off the Galapagos with Dr. Tabitha Mallory and Dr. Ian Ralby, the authors of the piece, Evolution of the Fleet, A Closer Look at the Chinese Fishing vessels off the Galapagos for SIMSEC. Tabitha, welcome, and thanks for coming on today. Tabitha,

if you don't mind starting, would you please tell the listeners a bit about your background? Yeah, and thanks for having us. So I'm kind of a non-traditional academic who does policy research. I run a small consulting firm called the China Ocean Institute and teach part-time at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. So my background is in international relations. I started studying Chinese my first year of college because I thought the language was fascinating and I was interested in Taoism of all things. So I don't actually have any formal training in fishery science or marine biology, but I grew up in Miami and spent a lot of time on ships as a kid. And I became interested in environmental issues just after spending a lot

of time studying in China where they have a lot of environmental problems. And I realized that China's marine environment was understudied. So I began to do some research on fisheries for my doctoral work. And I find fisheries management really interesting because it's at the intersection of science, economics, security, diplomacy, politics, law, although that's also what makes it so challenging to manage too. Thank you very much. And thanks again for agreeing to come on today. And Ian, how about you? Well, thanks very much. And thanks, first of all, to SimSec. This is my fourth article with SimSec, and I'm absolutely delighted to have the chance to continue working with you guys. I think what you do is great. I'm an avid reader as well

as a contributor, so delighted to be here. I am a maritime lawyer by background. I was in private practice in the port of Norfolk, working sort of at the intersection of law and security even then. But I left the practice of law and went and did a PhD at the University of Cambridge, where I focused on security, particularly private security regulation and oversight and re-entered practice just in time for piracy to be booming. And for the last decade, I've worked on maritime security issues all over the world in different respects, but largely focused on trying to make the law enforcement ecosystem work. So getting the laws on paper right, the oversight and monitoring of the maritime domain, the information sharing networks to work,

the interdiction operations, the evidence collection and prosecution, all the way down to penalization. And I've worked on probably every type of maritime crime, from environmental issues to drug trafficking, to arms trafficking, antiquity smuggling, fuel smuggling, so quite a wide range. And over the last several years, I held a number of different positions. I was with the Department of Defense's Africa Center for Strategic Studies for four years as an adjunct professor of maritime law and security. I was also a maritime crime expert for three years for the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes Global Maritime Crime Program. And I now run a consultancy, IR Concilium. We're a family firm and we focus on maritime resource and security issues around the world. So I am

focused on not any one geography, but any kind of bad activity on the water. Well, thank you very much. And thank you both again for joining us today. As a precursor, I want to remind the listeners that all opinions are our own and not representative of any institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. So I wanted to start with the methodology question for you both. How did you gather all your data? So I was getting some inquiries from the press about what was happening with the Chinese fishing fleet off the coast of the Galapagos. And so I reached out to Ian to see if he had any information because I knew he was working with WinWord and had some access to that data.

And so he was able to pull up some really interesting data within just a few minutes. And so he was the one that suggested that we write something on this together. And I've been working on researching the Chinese fishing fleet for years now. And I mostly use Chinese language sources, primary sources. So everything from government official documents and statistics to academic articles, media, resources in Chinese. And so really, essentially, once we put those two sources of information together, we were really able to illuminate what was going on, you know, including details about the fleet that Ian had put together, and then all the Chinese policies that were in place to make

it happen. And so once we, I mean, once we really put it all together, we actually wrote the article pretty fast. It was kind of like a catalyst, just putting, you know, both sides together. It was kind of a perfect match of both backgrounds and skill sets to be able to harness all this data from Windward, which is a private maritime intelligence and insight company that doesn't just give you the AIS data and some of the algorithm based analysis. it also provides information about each of the vessels. And that was, I think, a key difference maker for us was that we were able to look at the owners and operators of different vessels and then start drawing connections and patterns behind them. So we could look at who had engaged in fishing operations, who had engaged in transshipment and some kind of meeting, bunkering operations. And so by just looking at the full data set and kind of combining with

the more China-specific maritime expertise and then the maritime security and law enforcement side on my end, it, as Tabatha said, came together really quickly. Well, one of the first arguments that you advanced was that the Chinese fishing in these waters is not a new phenomenon. So how long has this been going on? I think the short answer is we don't know for sure. The longer answer is at least several years. And I think, you know, one of the starting points for writing the article was I was really puzzled by all the articles that were coming out over the summer saying a massive fleet has been discovered off of the Galapagos. This wasn't stealthy. I mean, the AIS was turned on. And for any of us who have been in the field for a number of years, this was not new. the 2017 interdiction of a reefer in Ecuador was a major national security issue for Ecuador at the

time. And it sort of shocked their conscience. It changed their prioritization of how they did law enforcement in the maritime domain. And so this was something that was already happening for quite a while. So what Windward allowed us to do was to look back into the data historically, And we were able to show that at least since 2015, there's been a gradual increase. And that's what we can see. And the reason we don't know for sure is that we can't go back throughout all of history, but we also don't know how often things were occurring with AIS off, how many times Chinese vessels were actually operating in the area without emitting any AIS signal.

So the data that we're working with is what we can see from AIS. We can't pull back and look at either synthetic aperture radar or electro-optical imaging to go back and say exactly what was happening. But overall, we can pretty well guess that the trend is gradually and quite significantly upward over the last four years. Yeah, we're going to get into the pluses and minuses of AIS data and its limitations a little bit later. But what changed between 2015 and 2016 that spurred the increase that you're citing? So I would say it's the confluence of a number of factors that stem from Chinese policies. So China has been subsidizing the distant water fishing industry for years. But around, well, starting in 2007, it began to provide fuel subsidies for the distant

water fishing industry. And then in the first couple of years of the 2010s, there was a huge increase in subsidies to shipbuilding. I think it was like 2012 was like the highest number of subsidies the industry had gotten. And that, you know, 2012 was also the same year that then President Hu Jintao called for building China into a maritime great power. And so, you know, I think there's a bit of a lag in seeing the effects of these policies around the world. But, you know, it's no coincidence that a few years later you begin to see this increase in Chinese fishing presence around the world. You know, Xi Jinping has continued these policies to expand China's maritime power.

So I think you're seeing the impact of that support and focus. And then another policy trend is China's shift away from the fishing operations in the EZs of other countries and towards the high seas. And that's because a lot of the activities in the EZs of other countries is costly, both in terms of the fees that China has to pay to get access to the fish. And then also there's just been a realization that there's a lot of difficulties to operate in other host countries. There's been a lot of pushback from those countries about, you know, poor, unsustainable fishing practices. And so because a lot of the high seas is still not very well regulated, China has been kind of pushing some of its capacity to the high seas and particularly targeting stocks that aren't regulated yet. So high sea squid is one of those stocks. yeah and i'll also say that you know i think there is some credit that is due to some of the

coastal states in different parts of the world for having gotten better at enforcing activity in their exclusive economic zones there is a a clear trend towards the high seas as tabitha says and part of that is that the exclusive economic zones just aren't viable uh there's it's too risky and and uh if you are going to fish illegally then uh you know it's a risk reward calculus whether you want to take that risk. And more and more states are making the exclusive economic zone inhospitable to illegal fishing. Of course, there are other tactics for how you can fish within the law, or at least with the permission of the coastal state. And we can talk about some of that perhaps later. But I think that the Pacific coast of South America in particular

has done an exemplary job over the last several years of really working to control the exclusive economic zone more and more. And that goes all the way up the coast. And the Permanent Commission for the South Pacific as a cooperative mechanism between Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile has done a lot to try to make sure there is a uniform action to keep distant water fishing fleets of any kind, not just Chinese, but anybody that is looking to enter the exclusive economic zone and fish without a license to keep that out. And I think credit is due to those coastal states. So what is the Chinese global fishing strategy? Is it actually codified somewhere? So I think if you look at the various government documents issued by the Chinese,

you can kind of piece together a strategy. So their policy really started, it was initially announced in 1983, along with a policy to spur the development of their aquaculture industry. And those two policies, so the development of aquaculture and distant water fishing industry, began to be implemented in 1985. And both were in order to relieve pressure on the domestic stocks, which were showing signs of being overfished. And so from the beginning, the industry was given financial support through subsidies, which increased over time. And then tax breaks like, you know, income tax on imports of fishing gear and fishing vessels, stuff like that, and also on the catch that they were bringing back. And then the central authority has also boosted the industry through its five-year plans. I don't know if people are familiar with the way China plans its economy, but they do it in these five-year increments with the central government issuing a plan.

And then there's more sector-specific plans that are issued either at the local level or for the different sectors and industries. And so the going out policy, which I think a lot of people know, that was a policy issued in 2001. That was part of their 10th five-year plan. And that was to encourage Chinese companies to go abroad and find new markets and new investment opportunities. And so the distant water fishing industry was identified as one of those industries. And then China began issuing five-year plans for fisheries starting in 2006. And then there was a five-year plan for distant water fishing that was issued for the first time in this most recent round of 13 five-year plans, which we're actually easing out of.

Actually, China just issued a draft of its 14th five-year plan just a few days ago. And so if we look at all of this, and then just some of the policies that are issued by the State Council and by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, which used to be the Ministry of Agriculture. And that's where the Fisheries Bureau is. You see a lot of strategizing over expanding the industry. And for many, many years, really since its inception, it was just to expand, catch as much as possible, build up the fleet as much as possible. That has been moderated a bit in recent years, I think, because of some of the pushback we've seen from the international community. And so, for example, you know, with that issuance of the 13th five-year plan for

distant water fishing specifically, there was a cap on the number of fishing vessels. They're capping it at 3,000, although they're not capping the overall capacity. And then what they're trying to do now is instead of, you know, just the focus on unfettered expansion is really to try to shift away from, you know, the quantity to the quality of the industry. And so consolidating the supply chain from point of harvest through, you know, to transport. For a long time, China was not really able to transport its fish back to China because they didn't have the kind of like low temperature storage facilities that you need to be able to do that. So now they're trying to put all of that in place so they can bring more back to China. And so setting up essentially the infrastructure to do

that, which includes building fishing bases and ports overseas that can help support that, in addition to the ones that we talked about in the article, to land more fish on China's shore. So they're essentially trying to capture a lot more of the value added. Thanks. Now, you repeatedly refer to the disinwar fishing fleet. How much of an actual entity is the quote-unquote fleet? Is it organized and how organized is it? Yeah, it's pretty well organized. I wouldn't say it's managed on a day-to-day basis by the government. The industry really started out as mostly state owned, and it's gradually become more privatized over the years. But even in the case of the state-owned industries, the state-owned enterprises, those operations, those companies

aren't controlled strictly by the government either. However, there have been, just with the advent of this international criticism of the activities on part of the fleet, there have been some stricter policies that have been announced to control the fleet's activities. Those have been put in place. Recently, there was an issuance of new revisions to China's distant water fishing regulations. Those came out earlier this year. And so what those have done is created strict requirements for companies to register their plans. The vessels all have to get licenses. And now they also have to report if they are coming and going from Chinese ports, registering jointly owned or wholly owned enterprises abroad, because that's been a

real problem with the industry is China bypassing some of the controls on the part of host countries to control foreign fleets in China's, sorry, in their waters on the part of the Chinese. And so, you know, to kind of control that, they've put in requirements to have a certain percentage of the fleet be locally owned. But China has been getting around that by forming some of these joint ventures. So now, you know, the Chinese are requiring its companies to report that kind of stuff, also reporting the reflagging of any of their vessels. the chinese distant water fleet also is not allowed to have a license for domestic fishing and distant water fishing at the same time so there really is a pretty strict division

in terms of you know where these these vessels are operating and then of course they're also controlled through the monetary support to the industry through subsidies so you know we've seen in the last few years in some of the more egregious cases of illegal unreported unregulated fishing on the part of the Chinese, the government has actually taken away some of the subsidies to those companies and vessels as punishment for that activity. So there's definitely some leverage there because a lot of the fleet would not be able to operate without the subsidies. I mean, particularly the fuel subsidies is the biggest cost for their operations. And so the Chinese always ultimately has some control through the amount of money it provides.

Thanks. So what is the makeup of the fleet? So, according to China's official numbers, in 2019, there were 2,701 distant water fishing vessels. And so, these are the vessels that operate outside of China's regional waters, which are the Bohai, which is really an internal sea, but the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. And so, it's essentially the vessels that fish in the EZs of other countries and then on the high seas. And it's quite possible that there are more, some that are just not, you know, kind of caught in China's licensing system, and then some that have re-flagged, you know, through these joint ventures or wholly owned ventures in other countries. So we probably won't see, at least in terms of the official numbers, the fleet going beyond 3,000 because there's that cap in place. But like I said before, even though the number of vessels is capped, we've seen the capacity of the individual vessels increasing over time. So they're larger, they're more powerful.

At this point, in terms of both the size of the vessels and the engines, they're starting to rival those of the European Union, for example. And so those have been increasing over time. And then, so in terms of, you know, which part of the fleet is operating where, you've got about 1,500 or so, according to official numbers, that are operating on the high seas. And those vessels tend to be a lot bigger than the ones that are operating in the EZs of other countries. And there are about 1,100 of those. It doesn't quite line up to the official number overall, but they're coming from different sources. So a few more on the high seas that are bigger than the ones on the EZs. The high seas fishing vessels have an average tonnage per vessel of 760 tons, and then the EZ vessels are averaging 330 tons.

So there's quite a significant difference just in the averages, although there's a range within that, of course. And then for the high seas vessels, close to half of those are squid jiggers, but you also have a number of tuna longliners and purse seiners and some trawlers. And then for the ones that are operating in EZs of other countries, about 800 of them. So there's about 1,100 or so altogether operating in other countries, and about 800 of those are operating in Africa alone. And there's another part of the industry, maybe about 300 or so, that are operating in Asia. Thank you. So there's a really telling quote from the middle of the article that grabbed my attention. It appears just underneath this graphic representation of where the individual vessels were,

and it appeared to be just this perfect crescent that exactly traced the EEZ. And your quote was, most strikingly, not a single dot appears within the EEZ of the Galapagos. So this is AIS data. Ian, you sort of hinted at this before, but I think there are some important considerations here. What would you say are the limitations and dangers of evaluating AIS data? Well, AIS data is only available when vessels equipped with AIS transponders actually transmit. And so if you are looking at vessels that are intending and knowingly engaging in illicit conduct, they will often turn off their AIS transponder. So data wise, we're limited to what we can see.

But I think there are a couple of things about that particular quote and about that particular image that are important. That was looking at all the instances of fishing activity over the two months of July and August 2020. And the fact that there's not a single dot even a little over the exclusive economic zone line is quite telling because it indicates that there is a discipline within the fleet. These are I mean, there are 364 vessels for not a single one of them to have crossed into the exclusive economic zone, despite being right up along the edge of it over that two month period indicates that there is a conscious effort to stay outside of it. If you look elsewhere, and I've spent time working in a lot of different parts of the world and looking at AIS data in a lot of different parts of the world, there will be blurs where you see vessels moving into the exclusive economic zone right at the edge, sometimes transshipping right at the edge. this was significant in that there wasn't a single dot inside and obviously we are limited because we don't know if that actually means that no shipment no fishing activity occurred inside the exclusive deck and like so but it does mean that with ais turned on none of the vessels engaged in a fishing

operation inside thanks so so what are dark vessels and can you describe some of the behavior that you characterize as suspicious? Yeah. Dark vessels are the vessels with AAS turned off. Some vessels will do it as a matter of course when engaging in illicit activity. Some do it as a matter of course when transshipping. But the SOLAS convention, the Safety of Life at Sea convention, requires that all vessels over a certain tonnage have their AAS turned on. And if they're going to be operating outside the exclusive economic zone, they are going to be over the gross tonnage requirement. So all of these vessels will have, by law, AIS transponders on board,

and they will be required or they are required to transmit. The only exception to that is if a master feels that for whatever reason, prudent safety of the vessel to turn it off, they can log it in their logbook. Otherwise, it's a requirement to have it turned on at all times. So when it's turned off, we call it dark. Now, there is one other option, which is that sometimes the transponders don't work. They don't always go consistently, and sometimes the signal is just lost. So sometimes darkness is inadvertent.

But regardless, darkness tends to be an indicator of illicit activity or some kind of suspicious behavior that the master and the crew do not want anyone to notice. What a vessel does while dark is impossible to say without other data sets. So we don't know if it's a transshipment, if it's a fishing operation, if it's a bypass of an oily water separator. We don't know what it is. So, you know, it could be any kind of operation that just wants to be invisible to those who are monitoring AIS data. But it is important to note that it is not per se illegal if a vessel goes dark. But it is certainly an indicator that there is a concern. So in terms of the activity we saw, a lot of the vessels not only engaged in regular transshipment or at least meetings with other vessels over the course of the two months,

but a number of them went dark for periods, 10 hours, 15 hours, long enough to do something and potentially do something outside of the area where they initially turned off the transponder. So that is why I said before, we don't know for sure if any of the vessels fished within the exclusive economic zone, but none of them did so with AIS turned on. So if any of that activity occurred, it occurred dark. Other activity that we saw that was suspicious included some of the background data more so than the specific operations. So whether vessels were sharing IMO numbers, sharing MMSI numbers, sharing names was something that we took a look at. And surprisingly, there were quite a number of what we call twinsies that did turn up in going through all the data. And, you know, initially we didn't notice it in that four vessels for the exact same name kind of just showed up on the list. And then we took effort to to make sure they were indeed four different vessels.

And that kind of work was probably what took more time than the initial analysis. It was harder to go further into that data than it was to get the picture overall. So, yeah, we can talk a little bit more about some of those dynamics. But it was quite interesting to note the dark activity among a lot of the fleet, but not have any clear answer for what was going on. Thanks. So, Tabitha, you hinted at some of this with your commentary earlier, the governance challenge on the high seas. Who regulates high seas fishing and who had jurisdiction over this particular piece of water? Yes. So the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea says that in the cases of fish stocks that are highly migratory or straddling stocks, so found either on the high seas or partially on the high seas and in the EZs of one or more countries, should be managed through regional fisheries management organizations. And then the follow-on agreement for that is the Fish Docs Agreement, which was issued in the mid-1990s. And so China has signed but not ratified that and is, however, a member of a number of RFMOs around the world.

Part of the challenge with the RFMO system is that it's essentially a patchwork. And so there's not any kind of comprehensive global fisheries management organization. And so what that means is sometimes you'll have, you know, fishing capacity in one part of the world that, you know, once that area is regulated, that fishing capacity just moves somewhere else. You're kind of, you end up playing this game of like whack-a-mole where you're trying to, you know, account for overfishing globally. But, you know, you're just you only have these kind of regional tools to be able to do it. And then you also have some issues within the RFMOs themselves. themselves. So, you know, a lot of the decision making process in RFMOs is by consensus. And so, you know, a lot of that process can be politicized. And you'll often have a lot of

industry representation as part of the different delegations to the RFMO meetings, you have a lot of industry capture that happens. And so the people who are critical of the way the RFMOs managed fish stocks, part of that criticism is that they're essentially too lenient. Even though there is scientific assessment that's informing the RFMO management system, there's a lot of pressure for the stocks to not be managed as strictly as they could be for sustainability purposes. So you've got a lot of issues there. And then with regard to this particular part of the world, there are two RFMOs in the area that are relevant. One is the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, the IATTC. So that regulates tuna. And then the other one is the South Pacific

Regional Fisheries Management Organization, the SPRFMO. And they've had some regulations in place for jack mackerel for a while, which China also fishes. And they're only issuing measures now that will go into effect next year to regulate squid. You know, and squid is, it's a difficult, it's actually a genus. It's difficult to regulate it. First of all, there are like 30 to 40 different commercial species of squid. And these measures are just starting really with one of them. And then from a scientific perspective, it's really hard to assess squid. It has a pretty short lifespan. You know, there's a lot of variation among these different species. And you're on the high seas, which is just, it's really big. And so there are a lot of challenges,

but those are the two RFMOs in place that have any regulation in that part of the world. And I think just to answer the question about who has controller jurisdiction, there's one other piece that's worth mentioning, which is the flag state has jurisdiction over the vessels under their flag. And that is a really important thing to know, because when we're looking at how to control the activity of vessels on the high seas, the role of the flag state is of paramount importance. And so whether it is in the fishing context or otherwise, flag states have exclusive jurisdiction over those vessels once they leave the territorial sea. And that is a really important leverage point that needs to be kept in mind. The other thing I'll say is that, you know, regionally

In the Southern Pacific, there are quite a few very active navies and coastal states who are playing an important role in, as I said before, making sure that the fishing fleets stay outside of the exclusive economic zones along the coast. And I think Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia all deserve credit, and they also deserve credit for the Permanent Commission of the South Pacific, and that is an entity that is not terribly well known. So the CPPS, by its Spanish acronym, is a fisheries-focused consortium of those four states, and they have procurement authority. They have actually a lot more authority than some of the regional fisheries bodies elsewhere. And so their role in helping harmonize approaches to countering illegal fishing has really done a lot to push foreign vessels outside of the exclusive economic zone. I want to go back to the earlier part of your commentary there where you talked about the flag of the vessels involved. So I was going to ask how much the flag of those vessels matters. You indicated at some point here that a number of vessels were Chinese, but they were Panamanian flags. So does Panama play a role in this situation? Yeah, and it's actually quite interesting. Panama is the largest flag state in the world, both by tonnage and by number of vessels. China is actually the second by number of vessels, not by tonnage. That would be Liberia.

But the two have a lot in common in terms of just the number of vessels flying those two flags. It is interesting to note that all the vessels that we talked about that were Panamanian flagged were reefers. So they were the vessels onto which the fishing vessels were transshipping in order to then keep the fish refrigerated until a shipment could head back to China. In each case, they were Chinese owned. In a couple of cases, I think the operating company was elsewhere in Asia, but that is, I think, quite significant to recognize that while most of the fishing vessels were Chinese flagged, the operation was much more extensive in terms of the flags. And we also had a British flagged vessel with the exact same name as one of the Chinese vessels that met with its namesake on a few occasions. And so, yeah, I think Panama is certainly a major jurisdiction for vessel registration, but it's not alone in terms of being worldwide probably a little bit short on oversight and regulations for this kind of an operation. And flag states could take a lot more action in terms of how they both monitor and regulate and try to diminish high-seas fishing.

But at the moment, a lot of the effort is actually put into the RFMOs rather than the flag states. And in order to make that switch, the IMO would need to coordinate a lot more with FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, its UN sister agencies, in order to push that from the flag angle. But it is quite important. I'll add something to that too. So there is an international legal instrument for flag states. Ian kind of alluded to it before, but it's the compliance agreement, which was also issued in the mid-1990s. And China has not signed or ratified that. And it essentially calls on states to act in a responsible manner in terms of requirements and standards for vessels flagged to that state. And so, you know, the issue with vessels reflagging to other countries is they do it because other countries have lower standards or, you know, are not necessarily enforcing some of the regulations as much. And then in terms of the, you know, so like Ian said, you know, a lot of the vessels that had been reflagged were the reefers. And China is issuing a new set of reporting requirements for high seas transshipment, and those are going to go into effect next year, in January of next year. But it's not very clear, if you read the text, whether or not those requirements also apply to vessels that are flagged to other states. So, you know, any kinds of transshipment that's happening between, you know, a Chinese flagged vessel and a reefer that's flagged to another state.

And there's been a trend in Chinese reefers being flagged to other states. So it's unclear how all of that is going to play out. Thank you. So what's the enforcement challenge for a country like Ecuador now? I think Ecuador is a really good country to look at in terms of enforcement challenges in the maritime space. If you look at a map, most of the time the map has the land and then a lot of blue where the water is.

If you look at a map that also depicts the jurisdictions in the maritime domain, the map ends up looking very different very quickly. The coast of South America is a pretty straight line from Colombia down to Chile. But when you add in the islands of the Galapagos, the exclusive economic zone of Ecuador shoots up in size. So legally, every coastal state and island and archipelagic state can claim a 12-mile territorial sea around the state and an exclusive economic zone out to 200 nautical miles. So even a tiny island that is within the sovereign territorial jurisdiction of the state, hundreds of miles off the coast, can still claim that 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, which allows for the state to exercise sovereign rights over the living and nonliving marine resources within that space. And that is how we get to this whole conversation of trying to keep foreign vessels from fishing without a license in the exclusive economic zone. And so Ecuador has a particularly challenging set of maritime security concerns because not only are they on one of the world's most challenging drug corridors, they are also looking out for pretty important and unique global heritage in terms of marine

and ecological biodiversity. So the Galapagos is a world heritage area and they have a marine protected area around it. So it's actually more protected than most economic zones. And that means that they have multiple challenges all at once. They have to look out for their security concerns vis-a-vis drug trafficking, movement of precursor chemicals, movement of fuel, arms trafficking, all the other sorts of maritime criminal activity that can occur in the maritime domain and certainly does along that coast. And at the same time, balance that with needing to do pretty aggressive fisheries enforcement in order to look out for that really sizable area of maritime space that is so important to marine biodiversity. There are quite a few unique, rare and endangered species within that area, and protecting them has been a priority of the Ecuador government. I think the arrest in August of 2017 of the reefer that I mentioned before, the Fuyuan Yuleng 999, is a really important case to note because it really did change things for Ecuador. It made them realize that they needed to be a bit more aggressive on countering illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. They needed to take more cautious approaches to to what was perhaps happening because on that vessel were hundreds of tons of illegally caught, endangered and rare species.

And they wanted to really do more to prevent that from happening again. And so IUU fishing went from sort of maybe fourth or fifth on the prioritization list to number one for at least a while. And that is always going to be a challenge for a coastal state is where to prioritize fisheries protection versus maritime law enforcement. But I think that balancing act continues. And one of the challenges a state like Ecuador will also have is that they are looking at foreign vessels, but their own vessels are perhaps doing things as well that support or at least enable some of that foreign activity to occur, whether it's bringing fuel or supplies or other things, or in some cases, even alerting and protecting them. And I'm not saying that that is specifically happening in Ecuador, but it happens certainly in this dynamic elsewhere, that they then have not only to contend with foreign activity that they're trying to keep out, but deal with their own local fishermen who at times are indistinguishable from traffickers and smugglers. And that makes for a very complicated prioritization challenge and large area to contend with. The last two questions, I'm actually going to reverse them because I think the order lends itself to that a little bit. So how do you address this problem? Is this problem with a national solution to, for example, increase the monitoring resources for Ecuador, or is this a grander policy issue?

I think it's a bit of both. And unfortunately, no matter what we do, there will be a response to it. So that means that the more nimble and agile the action, the better. I think that there needs to be greater attention paid towards monitoring, for sure. And the technology platforms that are now available to do that are incredibly helpful, as this collaboration with Windward has kind of demonstrated. But equally, then taking action on it needs to be a whole of government approach. One of the challenges that I think fisheries, ministries, agencies and departments around the world have is that they are often focused on sustainability and they leave security to the Coast Guard, the Navy, the Marine Police. And there's a schism. There's a there's a separation between them that often isn't bridged. And unless you make security of the economic space, so security of the exclusive economic zone as an economic matter, part of the mission and responsibility of the Navy's Coast Guards and Marine Police Forces, then you run the risk of having insight through one of these platforms, but not actually having the ability to do anything about it. So you have to get better insight. You have to have clear laws that give you clear authority and jurisdiction to do things to enforce fisheries laws. And then you need the actual physical capacity. So I always talk about sort of a five-part piece, capacity, capability, authority, jurisdiction, and then will.

So capacity is actually having the vessels, capabilities, knowing how to use them. Authority is being authorized by your agency to go out and do law enforcement. And then jurisdiction is actually having the laws and the legal ability to operate in that space. For example, you can't do arms interdiction on the high seas without some kind of additional UN Security Council resolution or something like that. So you need to have that that legal framework and then the will piece. And this is this is what's often lacking, is that the will isn't there to create the interagency mechanism to create the impetus for getting the different agencies together to go out and operate. Okay. Behind all that is the policy. And I think Tabitha is probably better able to speak to that. But I will say laws are overwhelmingly out of date and out of sync with what is happening on

the water. And the more we monitor through this kind of activity and get a better picture of what is actually happening, the better we can tweak the laws to actually root out the undesirable activity. If we don't know that vessels are twinning, if we don't know that they are doing certain things, the national jurisdictions may not have the legal ability to do anything about it. And I always bring this up. It's an embarrassment as a maritime lawyer, but the best comparative maritime lawyers on earth are all criminals. Everybody that's looking to take advantage of legal systems are much better at looking at different jurisdictions, seeing where there strengths, seeing where their weakness is, seeing how law is enforced, how it's actually

penalized, and they do a much better job overall than we do either as individual states or as regions in understanding how to make sure there aren't gaps that are able to be exploited. And so at the national and regional levels, we need to do a much better job of looking at what's actually happening on the water and coming up with the laws, the legal authority and the jurisdiction aspects to make sure that we can actually do something about it. Tabitha, did you want to add something on the policy piece? Yeah. So, yeah, I think everything that Ian said is true.

You know, I think there's a lot of really interesting developments in terms of technology that can help with this. You know, like WinWord's platform, you know, drone technology, stuff like that. But you also need to tweak your legal systems to be able to handle that kind of data input. And, you know, helping, I think helping countries that, you know, have capacity challenges. You know, it's really costly to monitor, you know, to monitor your EZs, you know, in terms of having the Coast Guard vessels to do it. Even fuel is really a big obstacle because it's so expensive. And so, you know, yet another area where some of these technologies like drones could be really helpful. And then, you know, in like the case of China, you know, I think it's really encouraging that we've seen a shift in recent years with China.

And, you know, 10 years ago, you didn't see any, you know, in any official policy document, any mention of IU fishing. So the fact that, you know, China is working this language into, you know, it's certainly the distant water fishing regulations that came out earlier this year. It's also been added to a draft of their revised national fisheries law. So that's all encouraging. But, you know, the implementation and, you know, the actual enforcement part of this remains to be seen. So I think that's just a kind of a twist on the, you know, the lag in the legal system that Ian was talking about. And then, you know, in terms of the global response, you know, so as I mentioned before, I think, you know, improving our, you know, system of regulating the high seas fisheries is important. And, you know, there's it's not just about the fisheries to, you know, also marine biodiversity is really important.

You know, it provides a habitat for a lot of these fish species. And so area based management solutions, you know, like marine protected areas are really important, although marine protected areas tend to be established at the national level. And so, you know, the negotiations that are happening right now at the UN on coming up with some framework to protect biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. So the BB&J negotiations, you know, what comes out of that, you know, in terms of tools to protect marine biodiversity, fish stocks in these areas that are shared among all countries, I think will be really important. And then, you know, there's other other kind of solutions like coming up with national level seafood traceability programs, you know, and there's overall been a an effort to develop an international seafood traceability system, you know. And so what that's important for is identifying areas in the seafood supply chain where IU fish could be entering and then taking measures to address that. And so China's working on this, but it doesn't, you know, really at no part of its seafood supply chain is it really up to these international standards for traceability. And even the U.S., it's important for the U.S. to have a traceability system in place, too.

So, you know, if we return to squid, for example, like I mentioned earlier, there are like 30 to 40 different species of squid. But right now, the U.S. is only keeping track, you know, at the at the kind of trade data level of only about two of those species. And so we just you know, we're importing a lot of squid, but we don't really know where it's you know, where it comes from, if it's caught sustainably. So, you know, filling out that system is really important. And then also subsidies. Subsidies are huge here. And I think one of the contributions of the article we did was to show, you know, like it's one thing to, you know, I've done a lot of work on subsidies and, you know, you're collecting a lot of data, you know, amounts that are being given. But it's, you know, I think it's just really interesting to see the impact that it actually has out on the water. The majority of those ships came from a province in China that gets the most subsidies from the Chinese government.

So, you know, just I think it just really connects that that impact. And there are negotiations going on right now at the WTO to get some kind of agreement to discipline fishery subsidies. And getting that right is is really important. And I also just think, you know, it's important for China to realize that overfishing is not in its long term interests either. And I think a lot of what we've seen from China is they're essentially complying with the letter of the law, but they're not really cooperating with the spirit of the law. And I think it's important for not just China, but all countries to really think about our kind of collective human future and wanting to have those resources for essentially indefinitely. And so that's going to require everyone's contributions and work on this issue to make it happen. So that leads directly to my final question is, why do you think this is getting attention now?

So, you know, I think there has been just a lot more awareness of China's fishing activities around the world. And that's partly because of better monitoring technology, kind of what our article has shown. And then just also, you know, better communication. So there's just more news coverage of this. Also, the huge subsidies, you know, I think we're seeing the impact now of these subsidies programs that China has put in place. And, you know, in some ways, the problem has really been around for a much longer time than just China's kind of recent activities. I mean, the other distant water fishing nations around the world got underway in the 1950s and 60s. So, you know, the former USSR was the biggest one for a very long time. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Spain. And so we just back then didn't really have the kinds of technology or communications that enabled us to really have an understanding of what was going on.

And so now China, you know, as all these other countries are exiting the industry because they're realizing that it's just not it's not really profitable unless you have the huge subsidies. China's trying to still make up for for lost time. And, you know, so I think we're seeing some international pushback, you know, and criticism of that. And, you know, I also think that if you want to think about this in terms of, you know, the U.S.-China relationship, the last few years in that relationship have been very tense. there's certainly been a downturn in U.S.-China relations. And, you know, I think it's great that the government is giving a lot more attention to IU fishing. But, you know, I also think that sometimes it's, you know, another area in which the U.S. can criticize activities on the part of the Chinese. And so, you know, I'm hopeful that with a new Biden administration that, you know,

I don't think, I think there are a lot of problems and a lot of challenges in the U.S.-China relationship. I don't think those are going to, you know, magically go away with the new administration. But I'm hopeful that we'll be able to discern a little more, you know, where we can have cooperative arrangements on certain issues. And I do think this is an area for more cooperation. I mean, there's a lot that both the U.S. and China have in common in wanting to address some of these issues. And, you know, in the past, the U.S. and China had a pretty active shipwriter agreement to patrol anatomous fish stocks in the North Pacific. And, you know, something like expanding that cooperation, it's probably not politically feasible now, but I think it's

worthwhile to try to figure out how to better cooperate with China on maritime enforcement. I mean, they have a lot of, you know, skills and technology now that can be used for, I think, for good purposes. And maybe that's through more of like a multilateral effort. And certainly the U.S. has some multilateral shipwriter agreements, like, for example, with the Pacific Island Nations. So I think if we think about that kind of cooperation, that could be very constructive. And I think I'll leave it there. Ian, go ahead. Well, I'll jump in and take a slightly different approach to this question. I think generally, people don't pay attention to the maritime domain. The wider public doesn't recognize

the maritime space at all. We are incredibly, as a human population, sea blind. We don't recognize that 90% of world trade happens by sea. We don't recognize the importance of submarine cables for even this very podcast. We don't recognize how much contribution there is from the water to life on land. And it's interesting that this particular set of vessels has gotten more attention than any of the others that I've encountered in my career as a fishing-related issue. And I think there are three reasons for it. The first is that if you look at general imagination when it comes to dealing with sustainability and with the environment, A single gorilla is poached and it makes the news and everybody is showing support for it.

A single elephant, a single rhino, we watch that. Thousands of tons of fish and we just don't seem to care unless it's within Shark Week or about whales. And that seems to be, unfortunately, the general trend. However, the particular location of this activity I think captures people's attention a little bit more. The Galapagos is sort of the epicenter of of global imagination when it comes to evolution of species and and biodiversity. And I think that helps because we associate the Galapagos with with unique ecosystems. And that that kind of speaks to the concerns about rare and endangered species. The second is that this has occurred during a pandemic, because if you look back two years ago, three years ago, nobody was paying attention and this was still happening.

So this is, you know, as we said, it's not a brand new phenomenon, but it is getting new attention. And I think the pandemic helps with that a little bit as well, because for the first time in recent memory, developed states suddenly felt supply chains for basic goods, including food, breaking down. And it's made everybody a little bit more sensitive and conscious of sustainability of food-based supply chains. And so this is a food security issue as well as being a maritime issue. And then the third is, as Tabitha said, the great power competition. And if you you bring up China and you talk about it in the sense of a resource grab, it captures people's attention. You know, this is this is a resource grab outside the Belt and Road Initiative. And that helps also focus people's attention on the activity that isn't just sort of subsumed under that BRI metric.

And I think that that helps as well. And I often ponder how to capture imagination relating to to the maritime space and towards sustainability and fisheries. And I'm delighted that for whatever reason, this one this one has. But I hope that it opens the door to recognizing that this is not a unique phenomenon and it's not a brand new phenomenon. And I think we need to do a lot of work to highlight where unsustainable practices, where illegal practices are happening around the world and do a bit better job to recognize that food security and food sovereignty are very reliant on doing something about unchecked, unfettered IUU fishing. Can I add one more thing, too? Absolutely. So, you know, I think China's role here is really important in terms of how transparent the country is being about its activities. And over the years, we've just seen less transparency, unfortunately. So with regard to the bilateral fisheries access agreements that China signs with host countries to allow for fishing in their waters, I mean, there's, you really essentially can't find any original copy of those agreements. So you don't know what's in them, you know, like, what are what are these host countries agreeing to? What are the terms of these agreements? You know, and then when it comes to subsidies, you know, I've been looking, I've been researching subsidies for maybe, you know, like six or seven years now. And there's actually been a decrease in China's reporting of subsidies over the years. And, you know, so we have an estimate. I put out an article last year with a group of people that estimated that China is the largest subsidizer of its fishing industry in the world. And it's, you know, 21% of the overall global subsidies and then 27%, so over one fourth of the global harmful subsidies.

And yet at the same time, in the last few years, we don't know exactly what proportion of those subsidies are for good purposes, what portion are enhancing capacity. And so I don't think China is necessarily doing itself any favors by not being more open about some of these activities. And, you know, there's a lot of concern that China is, you know, using economic leverage, you know, either through economic incentives or economic coercion to kind of get its way. And we just don't have a lot of insight into that. And so, you know, I think people are worried about what China's intentions are. And so, you know, I think if China were a little bit more transparent about some of this, you know, on its part, that would also help the situation. Well, thank you both very much. Those are all excellent points. That is unfortunately all the time that we have for today. So I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Tabitha Mallory, Dr. Ian Ralby. Again, the article is Evolution of the Fleet, A Closer Look at the Chinese Fishing Vessels Off the Galapagos. You can find that on SimSec. It's actually our most read article this year by a wide margin. So great article, podcast great as well. Tabitha, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? so i'm not the best twitter user but you can find me on there um at ma b shan which is my

chinese name so it's m-a-b-i-s-h-a-n or through my website which is china-ocean.org and i've been doing some research on more subsidies um traceability systems for seafood and then i'm doing a big project on understanding china's ecological civilization building policy and then I'm also hoping that Ian and I will do some more work on China's global fishing fleet because I think you know what we've found through writing this article and you know even through doing this this podcast with you is that there are still a lot of questions about what's going on thanks and then Ian same questions to you where can we find you and what's your next project I'm pretty easy to find online you can find me on twitter at I am

Ralby. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me on LinkedIn. And IR Concilium is my family firm. It's www.irconsilium.com. And that has a collection of all our articles and some of the work we're doing. I'm still working a lot on Gulf of Guinea related issues, as well as some in Southeast Asia, particularly around Indonesia. And I look forward to that collaboration Tabitha just mentioned as well. So I think you'll hear, I have a few pieces coming out soon on Caribbean and elsewhere, but I look forward to focusing more on this issue worldwide. Now, I think we're all listening or looking forward to everything that you both have outlined for the future. So thank you both again for coming on. To our listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll

see you next week. Sea Control is produced and edited by Keegan Ingersoll, Ed Salo, and William McQuiston. ¶¶