Charles Darwin was perhaps the most famous visitor to the Galapagos Islands. He arrived in September 1835 aboard HMS Beagle, under the command of Robert FitzRoy. More recently, a fleet of over 300 Chinese fishing vessels arrived but, unlike Darwin, they were uninterested in publishing their discoveries or, more accurately, their catch. To the contrary, it is believed that, while in Ecuadorean waters, the ships in the Chinese fishing fleet “frequently [turned] off their satellite-based automatic identification systems.”
Today’s featured quote is from a September 25 Voice of America article. Dr. Ussif Rashid Sumaila, one of the experts quoted in the article, is a professor of ocean and fishery economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. He is also the Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the UBC Institute for Oceans and Fisheries. Here is the full paragraph with today’s quote:
“There is big appetite for fish in China, which makes it worthwhile economically to engage in IUU [illegal, unreported, and unregulated] fishing,” he said. “There’s also a lack of strong and effective anti-IUU fishing policy by China, and there’s provision of significant harmful subsidies such as those for fuel.”
And here is a key, overview paragraph that preceded the quotes from Dr. Rashid Sumaila:
China’s large fishing fleets operating along the Pacific coast have triggered concerns from several South American countries for the past few months. In June, about 340 large Chinese trawlers ventured into waters near Ecuador, triggering protests over possible threats to the Galapagos Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to many unique species.
From the same article one learns:
-- That China has at least 17,000 fishing vessels. That is the number that have been documented by the Overseas Development Institute in London;
-- That China accounts for roughly one-third of the world’s seafood consumption “with an annual growth rate of 6%”; and that
-- “China has promised a ‘zero’ tolerance’ policy toward illegal fishing.
