“Our sea can’t handle this pressure anymore,” said Alberto Andrade, a fisherman from the Galápagos. The presence of so many Chinese vessels, he added, has made it harder for local fishermen inside Ecuador’s territorial waters, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“The Chinese effort has prompted diplomatic and legal protests. The fleet has also been linked to illegal activity, including encroaching on other countries’ territorial waters, tolerating labor abuses and catching endangered species. In 2017, Ecuador seized a refrigerated cargo ship, the Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999, carrying an illicit cargo of 6,620 sharks, whose fins are a delicacy in China.
“In the summer of 2020, the conservation group Oceana counted nearly 300 Chinese ships operating near the Galápagos, just outside Ecuador’s exclusive economic zone, the 200 nautical miles off its territory where it maintains rights to natural resources under the Law of the Sea Treaty.
Together, they accounted for nearly 99 percent of the fishing near the Galápagos. No other country came close.
— “How China Targets the Global Fish Supply,” New York Times, September 26, 2022
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