Tuna catches landings. (Photo. Terje Engoe)

Chinese fishing overwhelms marine resources

FIJI
Tuesday, July 24, 2012, 01:10 (GMT + 9)

Chinese businesspeople's fishing operations are overharvesting fishing resources on Fiji's waters in the Pacific ocean, local leaders state.

A traditional Fijian chief, the Tui Cakau, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu from Taveuni (on Fiji's second main island of Vanua Levu), claimed that Chinese businesspeople are paying locals to catch fish, clams, beche de mer and anything else from the Pacific Ocean in Fiji’s waters.

In this way, people inhabiting rural areas who badly need more income take the opportunity to make money by catching unsustainable amounts of wildlife to sell. And this situation represents a threat for local inshore stocks.

Graham Southwick, executive chairman of Fiji Fish Marketing Ltd, said the same thing is happening to other regional offshore fisheries as well, not just in Fiji.

"The inshore fishery [...] is certainly being fished down almost to oblivion," he stated. "The beche de mer fishery, for one thing, has hit the limit and the local Fisheries Department is now restricting operations.”

He spoke of the effects on both the offshore and inshore fisheries and called the latter “a very finite resource,” Radio Australia reports.

"It's a serious thing for the rural people who have not much resource in their little bays and their little lagoons and stuff. But there's a far more damaging operation going on in the offshore fisheries," Southwick explained.

He said the main problem appears to be legal as opposed to illegal fishing, as there are too many boats -- hundreds of them -- that are being licensed in areas like Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands as well as Fiji.

Although Fiji is making strong efforts to restrict how many vessels can fish within its waters, these efforts are not fruitful, as the hundreds of boats that are fishing up and down Fiji’s territorial limits are essentially doing the same harm they would be doing if they were operating inside Fiji’s limits, according to Southwick. 

In addition, after having “ransacked the Northern Pacific,” Chinese fishing operations are moving down in the Southern Pacific.

Official figures show a 125 per cent increase in two years in the size of China's South Pacific tuna fleet alone, Fairfax NZ News reports.

"It's a big concern to us local operators because obviously we have businesses to run as well and I guess we live in the real world where we've got bank loans, bank debts and we pay the kinds of interest rates that we have to do to survive and it's a tough game. But the Chinese fleets are heavily subsidized," receiving as much as USD 250,000 per year as a fuel subsidy from Beijing, Southwick said.

"It's only a matter of time before they overwhelm the whole situation," he added.

Related article:

- Tuna management plan under review

By Natalia Real
editorial@fis.com
www.fis.com

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