Great Wall of Lights: China's Sea Power On Darwin's Doorstep

AP ^ | 24 September 2021 | JOSHUA GOODMAN

[blueplum]

ABOARD THE OCEAN WARRIOR in the eastern Pacific Ocean (AP) — It’s 3 a.m., and after five days plying through the high seas, the Ocean Warrior is surrounded by an atoll of blazing lights that overtakes the nighttime sky.

“Welcome to the party!” says third officer Filippo Marini as the spectacle floods the ship’s bridge and interrupts his overnight watch.

It’s the conservationists’ first glimpse of the world’s largest fishing fleet: an armada of nearly 300 Chinese vessels that have sailed halfway across the globe to lure the elusive Humboldt squid from the Pacific Ocean’s inky depths....

...The vigilante patrol was prompted by an international outcry last summer when hundreds of Chinese vessels were discovered fishing for squid near the long-isolated Galapagos Islands, a UNESCO world heritage site...

...The Chinese fleet is able to fish for sometimes years at a time because they can offload their catch at sea into a network of giant refrigerated vessels, or reefers, capable of hauling more than 15,000 cubic meters of fish — enough to fill six Olympic-sized pools — to port. Giant tankers provide cheap fuel heavily subsidized by the Chinese government, adding to the environmental burden....

[blueplum]

from Asia to Australian waters to Atlantic and the Pacific, China knows their fishing is not only unsustainable it puts local fishermen at a distinct disadvantage at feeding their own families when acres of fish are scooped.

[Nifster]

As if China gives two cents with about the environment or sustainable fishing

[Rummyfan]

True. What they are about is one billion Chinese have to eat.

[HighSierra5]

Soylent Green.

[oldasrocks]

This will become real interesting once china drains out the remaining fishing stock in the world.

[wbarmy]

In 2017, that fishing fleet parked off the shoreline in Sierra Leone and “raped” their spawning grounds. The subsistence fishers saw their catch drop dramatically.

And not a thing could be done about it because there factory ship was outside the limit and the fleet would swoop in at night. Sierra Leone’s navy was not even near able to chase them off.

And those rusty buckets look just like the picture.

[PIF]

China (the CCP) knows their fishing is not only unsustainable it puts local fishermen at a distinct disadvantage at feeding their own families when acres of fish are scooped.
—

Among other attributes of the Chinese CCP commercial fishing fleet : it is a militarized and armed part of the PLAN.

Another Attribute : when they leave an area, there are no living sea creatures remaining. Stripped bare. Next stop : the Bering Sea and the rich bounty of cod, pollack, hake, salmon, sea mammals, etc ; as long as they remain outside of the US and Russian economic zones, there is no stopping them.

[blueplum]

true. After they scoop up the salmon, the US authorities make a grand announcement there’s less salmon coming up the rivers and imposes draconian fishing restrictions on American fleets - so the Chinese can have more!

[PIF]

After they scoop up the salmon, the US authorities make a grand announcement there’s less salmon coming up the rivers

—
There will be no salmon coming up any river that year, nor will there be any wild caught pollock for fish sticks, not hake for surimi (fake crab), no halibut, no black cod, no pacific bottom fish of any sort. Seals, sea lions, walrus, whales become endangered species to the point of extinction. The north Pacific becomes a lifeless desert, with many floating brown pools of human waste expelled from the enormous Chinese fleet.

American fishing fleets permanently tied up as there is no more biomass to harvest.